Tables in 10 minutes | Easy LaTeX Tables | STEM Skills with Dr. Sally

[@soswriting]

At last! It's here! The World's Slowest Builders and an endless parade of software fails couldn't stop it. I'm pleased to (finally!) present the guide to making tables in LaTeX. Despite their fearsome reputation, we can discuss everything you need to know in less than ten minutes! I hope you enjoy it, and if there's anything you'd like me to answer for you, please let me know now it's back in my box to work on the next one

[@mikhailbandurist8652]

I really love how you include memes and funny videos in tutorials. This keeps attention up and reduces some stress

[@soswriting]

I'm glad you're enjoying them and thanks for watching! :D Honestly, editing takes forever because I'm a noob, so the memes help my motivation too lol

[@karanahlawat9106]

Absolute baller for such high quality videos on such a dense topic

[@soswriting]

Haha thank you for saying so! I have a lot of fun making them :D

[@miguelreina2173]

Will be waiting on the video for references, since I struggle with them in my daily basis. Great video!

[@soswriting]

What in particular causes you problems with references? I'll make sure I address it :)

[@miguelreina2173]

@@soswriting Specifically, when the .ris is downloaded I don't know how to integrate it to my project. Thanks!

[@soswriting]

@@miguelreina2173 Ahh with a third party reference manager? As far as I know it's not straightforward and you have to do a bit of file conversion before you can use it. I don't use reference managers myself so not 100% sure of the exact process, but I'll make sure to find out and include it!

[@love_forever1143]

I really like how concise and informative your tutorials are. Thank you. I would like to see an example of how an entire research paper should be formatted in LaTeX or overleaf. Your walkthroughs are top-notch in every way. Please discuss the table, which is multiple pages long and difficult to comprehend.

[@soswriting]

Those are both excellent suggestions! Long tables (those that go across multiple pages) are annoying to work with, but I can definitely do a video on them :D Actually I had some in my own thesis and one of my papers, so I'm very familiar with how they work. 600 images, all in one giant table. Poor reviewers, lol. With regards to formatting a paper - would I be right to assume you're working with a template provided by a journal? If yes, let me know if there are any specific aspects of the template that are causing you problems. I'm happy to try and troubleshoot, or let you know about specific packages you might be missing or whatever. The video on it might take a little bit longer :D

[@badregase1943]

Just binged your whole LaTeX series, so so so helpful as someone who has never encountered it before...I know it's been a while so it's a long shot, but please make that referencing video you mentioned in the previous guide! That would make my whole year. Either way, thanks for the great tutorials!

[@soswriting]

Thank you so much for commenting! I apologise for how slow I've been with the rest of the series, unfortunately RL got in the way a bit (new job, moving house, etc, caused some chaos!). I'm hoping to get back to them soon, since the references video is more than halfway done already. I'm glad they helped, if you do have any specific questions about references I would be happy to try and troubleshoot with you :)

[@haraldurkarlsson1147]

Nice trick to simply add & and \\ columns to Excel and then copy into a LaTeX table. Thanks.

[@soswriting]

Glad it was helpful!

[@leoshat]

This was an amazing, easy and helpful course. Thank you so much!

[@soswriting]

I'm really glad it helped :D thank you so much for watching

[@FlaminTubbyToast]

That excel tip is so good! I didn’t even think about it!

[@soswriting]

I like to keep it simple :D I save time on data entry and waste it on making diagrams

[@CaptZenPetabyte]

Ooooohhh, you stopped here ... I was enjoying these

[@soswriting]

Sorry about that! I got a new job, and it sort of ate all my time. Things are settling down now so I'm hoping to get back to making videos soon (TM)

[@CaptZenPetabyte]

@@soswriting LOL no probs brother, and congrats on the new job, I hope things have been working out well and its awesome for you! :D

[@soswriting]

@@CaptZenPetabyte Thanks, that's really kind of you to say so! It's going really well, yeah. I've been learning a lot, and getting ready to share a whole bunch of new content!

[@mumk]

Thanks for such amazing series!

[@soswriting]

Thanks for being amazing and watching it :D

[@momohLBY]

love this, thank you so much!

[@soswriting]

Thank you so much! I'm really glad you liked it :D hope it helps

[@georgemartha6550]

Could you talk about Customizing Environments? Especially how to color the background of the environment. This would be much appreciated!

[@soswriting]

Absolutely! I'll add it to the list :D It's actually quite straightforward so if you want to change the page colour, you just need to add `xcolor` to the preamble with: \usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor} Then use the \pagecolor{[color name]} command. It's a switch, so it'll apply from whatever page you call it from until you change it to something else, so you can have different colour pages if you like! This page from the overleaf help guide has a nice example: www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Using_colours_in_LaTeX

[@nikhilgaruda9634]

Are there any table formatters in built that can make the table look good in the code also? I personally use a website for generating LaTeX tables but it would make process even faster if it's natively built in.

[@soswriting]

I don't tend to use them myself, so I'm actually not sure. I know what you mean though, I like the columns to line up properly, but the only solution I've ever found for that is to manually put in the spaces and tabs myself, which is very tedious and annoying. In the end, I just got used to having wonky tables in the code, as long as the output looks good I learned not to care :D if you do find a tool that does it automatically though, I'd love to hear about it!

[@johanndiethelm]

thanks a lot!

[@soswriting]

Hope it helps :D

[@mominulislam7456]

good content. keep it up.

[@soswriting]

Thank you!

[@robwin0072]

Dr. Sally, did you ever create that [LaTeX Reference] video? I do not see it on your KZbin Channel. 🤔🤔🤔

[@soswriting]

Not yet! It's the next one in the series, currently in production :)

[@TAP7a]

I do wonder how many non-Brits will get the "simples" reference. Apparently the Australians have the meerkats too?

[@soswriting]

:D