I have this code:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{ |c|c| }
\hline
\multicolumn{2}{|c}{\lipsum[1]}\\
\hline
text text text text text text & text text text text\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
It generates this:
How to make top cell fit the page size, like with X column format?
Here is the code, based upon Mico's example. It creates a page-wide table with a column to the left of multicolumn. (The adjustment of 1.2pt
is there to account for the three vertical lines, each 0.4pt
wide, that contribute to the total width of the tabularx
environment.)
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum,tabularx,calc,fullpage}
\newcolumntype{Y}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}X} % centered version of "X" column type
\begin{document}
\noindent
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{|p{3cm}|Y|Y|}
\hline
text text text text text &
\multicolumn{2}{p{\dimexpr\textwidth -1.2pt - 4\tabcolsep-3cm}|}{\lipsum[1]}\\
\hline
&text text text text text text & text text text text\\
\hline
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}
Best Answer
You could use the
tabularx
package and its eponymoustabularx
environment. The only tricky part is how to get the width of the 2-column term: To calculate the allowable width, you have to subtract from\textwidth
the following items:2\tabcolsep
, to account for the whitespace at the left and right hand edges, and0.8pt
(=2*0.4pt), for the widths of the two vertical lines.Addendum: If you want the two columns to have equal width (and still have their contents centered), just replace the
c
with aY
in the second argument of thetabularx
specification: