Mysterious \multicolumn{1} environments

[EliGurarie]

Fun package, thanks. However, for some mysterious reason, the converter adds all kinds of \multicolumn{1}{...} environments for no apparent reason that I could figure out.

For example, in this simple table:

study	agency	N	n.obs	years	n.years
Western Arctic	NPS / ADFG	128	114.6	2009-2018	10
Porcupine	ADFG / GY-DE	175	88.8	1998-2018	21
Cape Bathurst	NT-ENR	83	56.8	1996-2017	22
Bluenose West	-	159	83.1	1996-2017	22
Bluenose East	-	219	96.1	2005-2018	14
Bathurst	-	179	80.2	1996-2018	23
Beverly and Ahiak	-	105	70.1	1995-2018	17
total		1048	589.7		129

The latex code looks like:

% Table generated by Excel2LaTeX from sheet 'Sheet1'
\begin{tabular}{p{6.855em}lllll}
study                              & \multicolumn{1}{p{6.07em}}{agency} & \multicolumn{1}{p{2.215em}}{N}     & \multicolumn{1}{p{2.785em}}{n.obs} & \multicolumn{1}{p{4.645em}}{years} & \multicolumn{1}{p{3.355em}}{n.years} \\
Western Arctic                     & \multicolumn{1}{p{6.07em}}{NPS / ADFG} & 128                                & 114.6                              & \multicolumn{1}{p{4.645em}}{2009-2018} & 10 \\
Porcupine                          & \multicolumn{1}{p{6.07em}}{ADFG / GY-DE} & 175                                & 88.8                               & \multicolumn{1}{p{4.645em}}{1998-2018} & 21 \\
Cape Bathurst                      & \multicolumn{1}{p{6.07em}}{NT-ENR} & 83                                 & 56.8                               & \multicolumn{1}{p{4.645em}}{1996-2017} & 22 \\
Bluenose West                      & \multicolumn{1}{p{6.07em}}{-}      & 159                                & 83.1                               & \multicolumn{1}{p{4.645em}}{1996-2017} & 22 \\
Bluenose East                      & \multicolumn{1}{p{6.07em}}{-}      & 219                                & 96.1                               & \multicolumn{1}{p{4.645em}}{2005-2018} & 14 \\
Bathurst                           & \multicolumn{1}{p{6.07em}}{-}      & 179                                & 80.2                               & \multicolumn{1}{p{4.645em}}{1996-2018} & 23 \\
Beverly and Ahiak                  & \multicolumn{1}{p{6.07em}}{-}      & 105                                & 70.1                               & \multicolumn{1}{p{4.645em}}{1995-2018} & 17 \\
total                              &                                    & 1048                               & 589.7                              &                                    & 129 \\
\end{tabular}%

I think I would spend about as much time removing all those \multicolumn{1}{p{6.07em}} as formatting the LaTeX table by hand!

Any explanation? Or, better yet, any chance to make this behavior start?

Thanks

[krlmlr]

Can you try resetting the width of that column?

\multicolumn{} is normally used for merged cells, perhaps you need to un-merge?

It would help if you could share the file.

[EliGurarie]

I have tried resetting, widening them enormously, etc. There was no merging or unmerging. Just - weird.

excel2latextest.xlsx
The file is attached.

[KnickerPicker]

It seems that the problem lies in text wrapping. When disabling this in your document, the \multicolumn{} went away.
As mentioned in the update from 2017: "Cells that con­tain text and have text wrap­ping set will be placed in p columns" (https://www.ctan.org/ctan-ann/id/[email protected]).

Also, it appears that any other inconsitency in alignment, bordering, (etc.?) would result in multicomns.