separate style and content in table

1. All Cells:

If you want all the cells in a particular column to have the same formatting, you can use the collcell package which allows you to pass the entry of each column to a command for further processing:

enter image description here

Alternatively, you could also use the array package, and define:

\newcolumntype{R}{>{\cellcolor{red}}X<{}}

2. Select Cells:

If you only want a select number of cells to be colored then you can use additional commands such as \ActivateColorCell to enable cell coloring and \DectivateColorCell to disable the cell coloring as desired:

enter image description here

Notes:

  • I used the etoolbox package to provide the toggle to test if coloring is enabled, but it should be easy to adapt this to not require that package if desired using solutions from LaTeX conditional expression.

Code: collcell (all cells):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{collcell}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\usepackage{tabu}

\newcommand{\ColorCellRed}[1]{\cellcolor{red}{#1}}

\newcolumntype{R}{>{\collectcell\ColorCellRed}X<{\endcollectcell}}


\begin{document}

\begin{center}
\begin{tabu}{XXRX}
   1 &  2 &  3 &  4 \\
   5 &  6 &  7 &  8 \\
   9 & 10 & 11 & 12 \\
  13 & 14 & 15 & 16 \\
  17 & 18 & 19 & 20 \\
\end{tabu}
\end{center}

\end{document}

Code: array (all cells):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\usepackage{tabu}

\newcolumntype{R}{>{\cellcolor{red}}X<{}}


\begin{document}

\begin{center}
\begin{tabu}{XXRX}
   1 &  2 &  3 &  4 \\
   5 &  6 &  7 &  8 \\
   9 & 10 & 11 & 12 \\
  13 & 14 & 15 & 16 \\
  17 & 18 & 19 & 20 \\
\end{tabu}
\end{center}

\end{document}

Code: collcell (some cells):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{collcell}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\usepackage{tabu}
\usepackage{etoolbox}

\newtoggle{EnableColorCell}
\togglefalse{EnableColorCell}

\newcommand*{\ActivateColorCell}{\global\toggletrue{EnableColorCell}}
\newcommand*{\DectivateColorCell}{\global\togglefalse{EnableColorCell}}
\newcommand{\ColorCellRed}[1]{%
    \iftoggle{EnableColorCell}{%
        \cellcolor{red}{#1}%
    }{%
        #1% no cell color as it is disabled
    }%
}

\newcolumntype{R}{>{\collectcell\ColorCellRed}X<{\endcollectcell}}


\begin{document}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabu}{XXRX}
   1 &  2 &  3 &  4 \\
   5 &  6 &  7 &  8 \\\ActivateColorCell
   9 & 10 & 11 & 12 \\
  13 & 14 & 15 & 16 \\\DectivateColorCell
  17 & 18 & 19 & 20 \\
\end{tabu}
\end{center}
\end{document}

Code: array (some cells):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}
\usepackage{tabu}
\usepackage{etoolbox}

\newtoggle{EnableColorCell}
\togglefalse{EnableColorCell}
\newcommand*{\ActivateColorCell}{\global\toggletrue{EnableColorCell}}
\newcommand*{\DectivateColorCell}{\global\togglefalse{EnableColorCell}}


\newcolumntype{R}{>{\iftoggle{EnableColorCell}{\cellcolor{red}}{}}X<{}}


\begin{document}

\begin{center}
\begin{tabu}{XXRX}
   1 &  2 &  3 &  4 \\
   5 &  6 &  7 &  8 \\\ActivateColorCell
   9 & 10 & 11 & 12 \\
  13 & 14 & 15 & 16 \\\DectivateColorCell
  17 & 18 & 19 & 20 \\
\end{tabu}
\end{center}

\end{document}

Tags:

Formatting

Tabu

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