LaTeX – insert a PDF table as an image in a table environment

On of the most painful (at least IMHO) things to create in LaTeX are complex or big tables. It is easier to make them in a spreadsheet software (Libreoffice Calc, MS Excel or even Word) and export them as PDFs (either File->Export as PDF, File->Save as or using PDFCreator). It is possible to insert PDFs as images in figure environment like this:

\begin{figure}[!ht]

 \begin{center}                                      

   \includegraphics[width=0.85\textwidth]{images/table-frameworks-overlap.pdf}                                                                  

 \end{center}

 \caption{Similarities and overlap between the two PIM frameworks}

 \label{fig:table-frameworks-overlap}

\end{figure}

However, this caption starts with the word "Image X: …" while I want to have a caption stating with "Table X: …".

It is possible to insert a PDF in a table environment as well like this:

\begin{table}[ht]

  \caption{A table}

  \centering

  \begin{tabular}{c}

    \begin{center}                                                                         

      \includegraphics[width=0.85\textwidth]{images/table-studies.pdf} 

    \end{center}     

  \end{tabular}

  \label{tab:}

\end{table}

If a PDF needs to be cropped you can do it like this:

                                                       %left, bottom, right, top
\includegraphics[width=0.85\textwidth, clip=true, trim=0cm 0cm 0cm 0cm]

You might also need the following package:

\usepackage{graphicx}