[Tex/LaTex] Caption and tablenotes in two columns (in threeparttablex)

captionsfootnotesmulticol

I have a table with a long caption and footnotes on a landscape page, prepared using ThreePartTablex, but it does not fit. I'm now looking for options to make it fit. My best idea so far was to set both caption and footnotes in two columns. However, I have no idea how to do this for the caption and if using the multicols environment for the tablenotes, the distance from the table is too large.

This is an example of what I've tried so far:

\documentclass{scrreprt}
\usepackage[headsepline, footsepline]{scrpage2}
\pagestyle{scrheadings} %using scrpage2 to highlight typearea   
\usepackage{lscape}
\usepackage{pdflscape} % automatically rotates the pdf on landscape pages
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{ThreePartTablex}    % as I'm also using longtabu in another section, I'm using the x version of the package
\usepackage[format=plain, font={small}, labelsep = space, width=0.9\textwidth]{caption} 
\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}

\begin{landscape}
\begin{table} % to force everything onto one page
    \centering
\begin{ThreePartTable}
    \caption{My caption is quite long and uses multiple lines. \\ \blindtext }
    \rule{20cm}{9cm} %This table is actually in a separate pdf, thus I'm using a box here to represent it.
    \begin{multicols}{2}
    \begin{tablenotes}
        \footnotesize
        \item[a] First item
        \item[b] Another item
        \item[c] Another item
        \item[d] Another item
        \item[e] Another item
        \item[f] Another item
    \end{tablenotes}
\end{multicols}
\end{ThreePartTable}
\end{table}
\end{landscape}
\end{document}

I'm also happy to hear about possible other solutions that might be cleaner and/or look nicer, but spreading the table over multiple pages, for example, is not really an option as it presents an overview.

Best Answer

I've no idea how to do this for the caption, but for the tablenotes it's quite easy: before \begin{multicols}{2} you need \setlength{\multicolsep}{0cm} (or some other small value) I actually have:

\begin{tablenotes}
\setlength{\columnsep}{0.8cm}
\setlength{\multicolsep}{0cm}
  \begin{multicols}{2}
    \item[a]An item (footnote
    \item[b]Another item (footnote)
    \item[c]From reference \cite{ref_1}
    \item[d]From reference \cite{ref_2}
    \item[e]From reference \cite{ref_3}
    \item[f]From reference \cite{ref_4}
    \item[g]From reference \cite{ref_5}
    \item[h]From reference \cite{ref_6}
  \end{multicols}
\end{tablenotes}

putting the multicols inside the tablenotes.

Related Question