How to make this table page-breakable?

Question

I currently have a table that has grown a bit and no longer fits its intended space. Since I expect this table to keep growing in the future, I need to make it page-breakable while keeping its current style. There are many posts out there on how to get page-breakable tables, but I have not been able to use any of the solutions I have found because I either got errors I could not wrap my head around, or the final output did not look as intended.

I share below a MWE which shows my current (non-breakable) table as well as a screenshot of the output it produces. What the MWE does is create a list environment which I then invoke whenever necessary. My goal is to replicate this output but making sure that the table will correctly break (rather than jump) whenever it reaches a page break.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\begin{document}

\newenvironment{entrylist}{%
  \noindent
  \begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}}rl}
}{%
  \end{tabular*}
}
\newcommand{\entry}[4]{%
    \parbox[t]{1.75cm}{#1\raggedleft}&\parbox[t]{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\tabcolsep-1.75cm}{\strut%
    \textbf{#2}%
    \hfill%
    {\footnotesize #3\par\strut}%
    #4\vspace{\parsep}%
  }\\}

\begin{entrylist}

  \entry
    {XXXX}
    {Fancy stuff 1}
    {Fancy stuff 1}
    {Fancy stuff 1}

  \entry
    {YYYY}
    {Fancy stuff 2}
    {Fancy stuff 2}
    {Fancy stuff 2}

  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    
\end{entrylist}

\end{document}

Thank you all very much for your time.

Answer 1

You need not encapsulate the whole stuff into tabular environment. You can define format of each \entry by your macros. The \smallskip after \hbox is page-breakable, of course.

\newdimen\colsep \colsep=1em
\def\topbox#1#2{\vtop{\parindent=0pt \hsize=\dimexpr#1\relax #2}}
\def\entry#1#2#3#4{\par
   \hbox{\topbox{1.75cm}{#1\raggedleft}\kern\colsep
         \topbox{\hsize-2\colsep-1.75cm}{{\bf#2}\hfill {\footnotesize#3}\endgraf#4\strut}}
   \smallskip
}

  \entry
    {XXXX}
    {Fancy stuff 1}
    {Fancy stuff 1}
    {Fancy stuff 1}

  \entry
    {YYYY}
    {Fancy stuff 2}
    {Fancy stuff 2}
    {Fancy stuff 2}

  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}

Answer 2

I think all you need to do is

• load the longtable package and issue the instructions \setlength\LTleft{0pt} and \setlength\LTright{0pt} in the preamble and

• replace \begin{tabular*}{\textwidth} with \begin{longtable} and \end{tabular*} with \end{longtable} in the definition of the entrylist environment.

Optionally, you could delete the \noindent directive at the start of the definition of the entrylist environment.

See section 5, entitled "Adjustment", of longtable user guide for more information about what the length parameters \LTleft and \LTright do.

Answer 3

Use longtable.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{longtable,array}

\usepackage{lipsum} % for nonsense text
\usepackage{showframe} % for showing the page boundaries

\newlength{\entrylistwidth}
\setlength{\entrylistwidth}{1.75cm}
\newenvironment{entrylist}{%
  \begin{longtable}{
    @{}
    w{l}{\entrylistwidth}
    p{\dimexpr\textwidth-2\tabcolsep-\entrylistwidth}
    @{}
  }
}{\end{longtable}}

\newcommand{\entry}[4]{%
  #1 & \textbf{#2}\hfill{\footnotesize #3\par}#4\\\noalign{\vspace{\parsep}}%
}

\begin{document}

\begin{entrylist}

  \entry
    {XXXX}
    {Fancy stuff 1}
    {Fancy stuff 1}
    {\lipsum[1][1-3]}

  \entry
    {YYYY}
    {Fancy stuff 2}
    {Fancy stuff 2}
    {\lipsum[2][1-3]}

  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
  \entry
    {ZZZZ}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {Fancy stuff 3}
    {\lipsum[3][1-3]}
    
\end{entrylist}

\end{document}