LaTex table, how to make a table sequel to not be counted and labeled as a new table?

Question

I'm new to LaTex and I'm having some trouble dealing with issue related to tables. I have two tables -- let's say, table 1 and table 2. LaTex compiler is treating these as different tables, so it captions Table 1 as Table number 1, and table 2 as table number 2. Except that, in my case, table 2 is suposed to be a sequel to table 1, that I just cut so it can fit the page. I don't want LaTex to count it as a new table in the order, so both tables should be captioned as "Table 1". How can I do that? Please help me, and thank you in advance!

Answer 1

(I initially thought this query had to be a dupe. However, I couldn't find a clean-enough earlier comparator.)

If you want to provide a table environment but don't want its \caption statement to increment the table counter, be sure to (a) load the caption package in the preamble and (b) issue the instruction \ContinuedFloat immediately after the second table environment's \begin{table} opening statement.

If you don't want the continued table's caption to show up in the "List of Tables" page (created by \listoftables), simply provide an explicit empty optional argument to its \caption statement.

When doing this, it's a good idea to not use identical caption texts for the floats in question, as otherwise readers might easily get the impression that some kind of bizarre repetition has occurred. E.g., if the first float's caption text is "Descriptive statistics", it might be helpful to use "Descriptive statistics, cont'd" as the caption text for the second float.

Additional remarks:

• Note that this method isn't limited to two consecutive table (or, for that matter, figure) environments. If you want, you can have several continued floats that share a given value of the table (figure) counter.

• If you happen to employ the subcaption package, which automatically loads the caption package, and have, say, two subtable environments (each with its own \caption statement) in two consecutive table environments, then inserting a \ContinuedFloat directive at the start of the second table environment will not only cause the two overall captions to share the same number, but the subtable captions in the continued float will be numbered "(c)" and "(d)", respectively, instead of "(a)" and "b".

---

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{caption} % for '\ContinuedFloat' macro

\begin{document}

\listoftables
\newpage % start a new column (b/c in two-column mode)

% provide three 'table' environments that use the same counter (here: "1")
\begin{table}[ht]
\centering
\caption[Cartoon characters]{Cartoon characters, part 1}
    % mandatory and optional arguments of '\caption' needn't be the same
\begin{tabular}{ll}
Minnie & Mickey
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

\begin{table}[h]
\ContinuedFloat
\centering
\caption[]{Cartoon characters, part 2} % note the empty optional argument
\begin{tabular}{ll}
Daisy & Donald
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

\begin{table}[h]
\ContinuedFloat
\centering
\caption[]{Cartoon characters, part 3} % note the empty optional argument
\begin{tabular}{ll}
Goofy & Pluto
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

\end{document}