[Tex/LaTex] Fit a table without changing the font size

tables

I have large tables and they tend to no fit within the page so i used {adjustbox}{width=1.0\textwidth} but this make the font extreemly small.

Is there a way that i can fit the table without changining the font size?

\begin{center}
\begin{table}

\begin{adjustbox}{width=1.0\textwidth}

\begin{tabular}{|llll|}
\hline 
Item & Manufacturer & Catalogue number & Use/Purpose \\ 
\hline \hline 
DMEM Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium & Life Technologies  & 41965-039
 & Maintain cultured RBL-2H3 cells  \\ 
\hline 
Penicillin-streptomycin
 & Life Technologies  & 15140-122 & Supplement for cell culture medium \\ 
\hline 

\hline\end{tabular} 


\label{tab}
\end{adjustbox}
\caption{Table to test captions and labels}
\end{table}
\end{center}

Best Answer

I suggest you use a tabularx environment and the X column type (both provided by the tabularx package) for the first and fourth columns.

The tabularx environment takes as one of its arguments the desired width of the environment; I would choose \textwidth, i.e., let the table occupy the full width of the textblock. The X column type (and the derived type L used in the example below) allow for automatic line breaks, while relieving the writer (you!) of the chore of having to compute the exact column widths.

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{adjustbox}
\usepackage{tabularx,ragged2e,booktabs}
\newcolumntype{L}{>{\RaggedRight\arraybackslash}X}
\begin{document}
%%%\begin{center}
\begin{table}[h!]

\begin{adjustbox}{width=1.0\textwidth}
\begin{tabular}{|llll|}
\hline 
Item & Manufacturer & Catalogue number & Use/Purpose \\ 
\hline \hline 
DMEM Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium & Life Technologies  & 41965-039
 & Maintain cultured RBL-2H3 cells  \\ 
\hline 
Penicillin-streptomycin
 & Life Technologies  & 15140-122 & Supplement for cell culture medium \\ 
\hline \hline
\end{tabular} 
\end{adjustbox}

\caption{before: tabular, ``l'' columns, adjustbox} \label{tab1}

\end{table}
%%%\end{center}

\begin{table}[h!]
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}LllL@{}}
\toprule
Item & Manufacturer & Catalogue  & Use/Purpose \\
& & Number & \\ 
\midrule 
DMEM Dulbecco's Modified Eagle Medium & Life Technologies  & 41965-039 & Maintain cultured RBL-2H3 cells  \\
\addlinespace 
Penicillin-streptomycin
 & Life Technologies  & 15140-122 & Supplement for cell culture medium \\ 
\bottomrule
\end{tabularx} 

\caption{after: tabularx, ``L'' columns, booktabs-based lines}\label{tab2}
\end{table}

\end{document}
Related Question