[Tex/LaTex] Stop table going off page (vertically)

lyxmarginstables

Much like this question, I want to force a table to fit within the vertical page margins.

Any ideas?

Edit:

Margin size: \usepackage[left=3cm,right=3cm,textheight=23.5cm]{geometry}

Present situation:
Output and LyX text.

Best Answer

In my comment, I advocated something like:

\newsavebox\mybox
\sbox{\mybox}{your table goes here}
\scalebox{scale factor}{\usebox{\mybox}}

where scalefactor is a number and your table is something like a tabular. In this illustrative example below, I first set the text height shorter (2.8") just so it is easier to see what is going on. The first thing I do I set a large tabular without any changes. Because it exceeds the length of page 1, it ends up on page 2, and you see that it stretches down to the page number.

So, after clearing a page, I show how placing the table into a box and scaling it to a size smaller than unity can resolve the height issue (page 3). Of course, the font size is no longer uniform through the document.

On page 4, I show how this approach can be incorporated into a float, such as a table.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\textheight 2.8in
\begin{document}
{\centering
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
\hline
Variable & description of the variable\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
\end{tabular}\par
}
\clearpage
\newsavebox\mybox
\sbox{\mybox}{%
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
\hline
Variable & description of the variable\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
}
{\centering\scalebox{.9}{\usebox{\mybox}}\par}
\clearpage
\begin{table}
\caption{My caption}
{\centering\scalebox{.85}{\usebox{\mybox}}\par}
\end{table}
\end{document}

enter image description here

If the table to be scaled is not a float, but merely a tabular, it can be scaled exactly to the \textheight using the \scaleto{object}{height} feature of the scalerel package:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\textheight 6in
\usepackage{scalerel}
\begin{document}
\newsavebox\mybox
\sbox{\mybox}{%
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
\hline
Variable & description of the variable\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
Variable & description\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
}
{\centering\scaleto{\usebox{\mybox}}{\textheight}\par}

\end{document}
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