# How to stretch a specific column

What I have is a table that should stretch to the text width and want a specific column to stretch. What I have now is

\begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{ll r@{.}l l r@{.}l r@{.}l}
...
\end{tabular*}


What I want is that all columns except one (the second) should have prescribed width and the second column have whatever width that's needed for the table to add up to \textwidth

• You seem to be looking for tabularx, where the X columns have this property. E.g.\documentclass{article} \usepackage{tabularx} \begin{document} \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{lX r@{.}l l r@{.}l r@{.}l} A & B & C & D & E & F & G\\ \end{tabularx} \end{document} – marmot Feb 7 at 5:02
• @marmot does the tabularx stretches the specific column? I thought it, by itself, renders the table to span an entire column. I did not knew it stretch a single column :D – Raaja Feb 7 at 7:26
• @Raaja Yes, I think so. You can just run the code to check. – marmot Feb 7 at 7:29
• @marmot Atleast works for me ;) (may be you should make that as the answer imo) – Raaja Feb 7 at 7:55
• @marmot Yes, I think that would answer the question as asked. A bonus would be if you have a solution to fulfill the intent too (to have the other columns have prescribed width, for example I want the first column to be say 42mm wide etc). – skyking Feb 7 at 8:54

The tabularx package allows you to typeset tables with one or more columns of type X, which stretch to the available space. Columns of fixed width w can be obtained with p{w} where w is length. By default, the stuff in these columns is left-aligned, but you can change this as the following shows.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{|p{42mm}|X|r@{.}p{12mm}|p{12mm}|
>{\raggedleft\arraybackslash}p{1cm}@{.}p{1cm}|>{\raggedleft\arraybackslash}p{1cm}@{.}l}
A & B & C & D & E & F & G\\
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}


The vertical delimiters are only introduced for illustration. Of course, there is much more one could say about tables, and this site is full of examples.