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In my answer to question How do I repeat the first table row on every page using longtable inside of tcolorbox?

I suggest to (between others) to use makecell package to define head of table and later I sow that the firs row is not colored as expected. It doesn't cover all row. Than I try to correct this with use of cellcolor construct as should be correctly done, when you use multicolumn (simplified MWE from mentioned question):

\documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage[table]{xcolor} \usepackage{longtable} \usepackage{makecell} \renewcommand\theadfont{\bfseries} \usepackage[active,tightpage]{preview} \PreviewEnvironment{longtable}% \setlength\PreviewBorder{1em} \begin{document} \begin{longtable}{|*{9}{b{\dimexpr 0.11\linewidth-2\tabcolsep}|}} \hline \multicolumn{8}{|c|}{\cellcolor{gray!30}{\thead{head\\ 1}}} & \cellcolor{gray!30}{\thead{head\\ 2}} \\ \hline 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 \\ \hline\hline \endfirsthead \hline 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 \\ \hline\hline \endhead A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I \\ J & K & L & M & N & O & P & Q & R \\ S & T & U & V & W & X & Y & Z & \\ \hline\hline \end{longtable} \end{document}

and discover that that head inmulticolumn doesn't has width of it and consequently head background color doesn't fill complete cell.

enter image description here

I Check makecell documentation, but doesn't find valuable information how to stretch actual head to cover entire cell. How to achieve that entire multicolum cell background will be colored?

addendum: for this particular case the stretch \thead over whole \multicolumn can be done on the following way: instead of

\multicolumn{8}{|c|}{\thead{\hfill head\hfill\\ 1}}

the multi column cell should be defined as

\multicolumn{8}{|p{\dimexpr 0.88\linewidth-\tabcolsep}|}{\thead{\hfill head\hfill\\ 1}}

where \dimexpr 0.88\linewidth-\tabcolsep is the width of multi col cell. then the result is:

enter image description here

however, general solutions are given in answers below.

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2 Answers 2

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If you put the \thead in the \multicolumn{|c|} in a \colorbox, it works (somewhat redundantly…):

\documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage{xcolor}%[table] \usepackage{array, colortbl} \usepackage{longtable, ltablex} \usepackage{makecell} \renewcommand\theadfont{\bfseries} \usepackage[active,tightpage]{preview} \PreviewEnvironment{longtable}% \setlength\PreviewBorder{1em} \begin{document} \begin{longtable}{|*{9}{b{\dimexpr 0.11\linewidth-2\tabcolsep}|}}% \hline \rowcolor{gray!30}\multicolumn{8}{|c|}{{\colorbox{gray!30}{\thead{head\\ 1}}}} & \thead{head\\ 2} \\ \hline 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 \\ \hline\hline \endfirsthead \hline 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 \\ \hline\hline \endhead A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I \\ J & K & L & M & N & O & P & Q & R \\ S & T & U & V & W & X & Y & Z & \\ \hline\hline \end{longtable} \end{document}

enter image description here

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  • Indeed. But now I need to manually calculate width of columns which are spanned by multicolumn. This can become annoying/problematic when the widths of column are not equal and/or determined with specifier with not a priory given width. Commented May 26, 2015 at 6:46
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    @Zarko: I changed the code to avoid those calculations: it's enough to put to add a \colorbox. See my updated answer. Commented May 26, 2015 at 7:59
  • now I'm total confused. Why now this work and didn't in my first tray? I need detail examination of all my "experiments", to see where are differences. One another observation: you put array package twice in preamble, probably by mistake. I try to compile without it and also without ltablex package and obtain the same results as you show in your answer. Commented May 26, 2015 at 8:45
  • Now I observe differences: you add colortab in preamble and use colorbox instead cellcolor ... Good to know, thank you! I will change now my acceptances of answer. Commented May 26, 2015 at 8:51
  • Yes, array was loaded twice by mistake, I've corrected. I tested, and it doesn't seem to be required. I generally add it because it extends the syntax of the original array environment. As to ltablex it is there because I tested with a tabularx environment (it allows the latter to break across pages), but I get an error which I don't understand, about a spurious }. You can remove it. Commented May 26, 2015 at 9:07
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I don't think that makecell is fully compatible with colortbl. However, you can easily emulate \thead:

\documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage[table]{xcolor} \usepackage{longtable} \newcommand{\thead}[1]{% \bfseries \begin{tabular}{@{}c@{}} \vrule height 1.2\ht\strutbox width 0pt\ignorespaces #1 \unskip\vrule depth 1.2\dp\strutbox width 0pt \end{tabular}% } \begin{document} \begin{longtable}{|*{9}{b{\dimexpr 0.11\linewidth-2\tabcolsep-\arrayrulewidth}|}} \hline \multicolumn{8}{|c|}{\cellcolor{gray!30}{\thead{head\\ 1}}} & \cellcolor{gray!30}{\thead{head\\ 2}} \\ \hline 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 \\ \hline \endfirsthead \hline 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 & 7 & 8 & 9 \\ \hline \endhead A & B & C & D & E & F & G & H & I \\ J & K & L & M & N & O & P & Q & R \\ S & T & U & V & W & X & Y & Z & \\ \hline \end{longtable} \end{document}

enter image description here

Here's a minimal example:

\documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage[table]{xcolor} \usepackage{makecell} \renewcommand{\theadfont}{\bfseries} \begin{document} \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|} \hline \multicolumn{2}{|c|}{\cellcolor{gray!30}\thead{head\\1}} & \thead{head\\2} \\ \hline 111 & 222 & 333 \\ \hline \end{tabular} \end{document}

enter image description here

Using \rowcolor doesn't solve the problem.

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  • thank you for editing my question and for answer. You confirm my suspect that makecell and colortab are not full compatible. As I see, thead doesn't use complete width of "multi-column" cell.That means, that there is a chance that one day this will be fixed :-). For particular case, mentioned in my question, where the first row is not multi-lined, is then better solution not use makecell and thead at all. Other wise, your solution is what I will use in future in similar cases. Commented May 25, 2015 at 22:53

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