Excel – How to create a sophisticated table like the one attached

latexmicrosoft exceltable-styles

I'm writing a paper where I systemize knowledge. At the moment I have a very big excel file. In order to fit this table into an A4 paper, I would have to create a table similar to the one attached. As a matter of fact I have read many papers where similar tables are being shown. What software do I need to create something like this? Is this latex?

table

Best Answer

The table can be created in LibreOffice Calc.

The following screenshot shows similar table that has been created in LibreOffice Calc. The table can be fitted within A4-sized paper in landscape orientation, but not portrait.

Table reproduced in LibreOffice Calc

Text format details

The following font family and size are used.

  • Liberation Serif 10 for text

  • DejaVu Serif 10 for symbols

The following symbols are found in Unicode Character Database.

✻   U+273B TEARDROP-SPOKED ASTERISK
†   U+2020 DAGGER
○   U+25CB WHITE CIRCLE
◐   U+25D0 CIRCLE WITH LEFT HALF BLACK
●   U+25CF BLACK CIRCLE

For quick lookup, refer to Unicode symbols on Wikipedia. Users on Linux platform can use GNOME Character Map that is based on the Unicode Character Database 6.3.0 (as version 3.10.1).

Format discrepancy

The appearance of symbols may vary when using different font family i.e. Liberation font family renders some symbols at different size; DejaVu Serif renders at same size. Also, symbol might need repositioning (Go to: Format > Character > Position) to mimic the text appearance in original table.

Character position setting

The slanted text is achieved by changing the text orientation (Go to: Format > Cells... > Alignment) from 0 to 60 degrees. By doing this in LibreOffice, the cell border lines will be shifted towards right. Therefore, one might have to apply similar formatting of cell borders to the next several columns to get equal length of table border lines in final document (either in Print Preview or Export PDF).

Format cells with text alignment, extra border line

Remarks: Reproduced table in LibreOffice Calc 5.1 on Linux. This answer shall be useful and applicable for those who use LibreOffice on Windows.

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