mjhjmtu

I am trying to break a very very long number, 128 in length, to fit into a table cell so it won't go over the page.

I've looked up methods using longtabu, tabular with p5cm commend, makecell, parbox, multicolumn with p5cm, but non of those works. It seems like they only line break at "space" but does not line break one whole word, in my case is number.

I know it is possible to manually break line with \ or newline, but this doesn't seem practical in the long-run as I need to manually change this as the format of my document may change depending on the requirements given to me.

The only way I have in mind now, is to screenshot the long numbers into a figure, and insert it into the table. But if there is a better solution, I would like to use it.

Code that I use to longtabu attempt

beginlongtabu to textwidth X[1,c]
 
 hline
 textbfHead 1 & 
 textbfHead 2 
 \ hline
 12:18:52 & this is a description for the event \hline
 12:18:52 & this is a description for the event \hline
 12:18:52 & this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event this is a description for the event \hline
 12:18:52 & 11111111111111111111111111111111111111222222222222222222222222222222222222222223333333333333333333333333333333333344444444444444444444455555555555555555555555555555555666666666666666666666666666777777777777777777777778888888888888888\hline
endlongtabu

Using p

begintabular
 This text will be wrapped & Some more text \hline
 this & 11111111111111111111111111111111111111222222222222222222222222222222222222222223333333333333333333333333333333333344444444444444444444455555555555555555555555555555555666666666666666666666666666777777777777777777777778888888888888888\hline
endtabular

Herbert solution at Break long word in tabular

You could load the xurl package and encase the long number in a url... "wrapper".

(The following code uses a tabularx environment since I'm not familiar with longtabu.)

documentclassarticle
usepackagetabularx,xurl
urlstylesame
begindocument 
noindent
begintabularxtextwidth@ lX @
hline
textbfHead 1 & textbfHead 2 \ 
hline
12:18:52 & this is a description for the event \
hline
12:18:52 &
url11111111111111111111111111111111111111222222222222222222222222222222222222222223333333333333333333333333333333333344444444444444444444455555555555555555555555555555555666666666666666666666666666777777777777777777777778888888888888888\
hline
endtabularx
enddocument

Another solution with seqsplit, xltabular, which combines the functionalities of longtable and tabularx, and makecell to define some vertical padding of cells in the table:

documentclassarticle
usepackageseqsplit, makecell, xltabular

begindocument

setcellgapes[b]3pt
setcellgapes[t]2ptmakegapedcells
noindentbeginxltabulartextwidthc%

enddocument 

The problem is that the number is not in the list of words that tex uses to determine possible break points of words, but one can manually add them by placing - at each point where the number can be broken across lines:

documentclassarticle

usepackage[english]babel

begindocument

begintabular
 This text will be wrapped & Some more text \hline
 this & 1-111-111-1111-111-111-11-111-111-111-111-111-111-122-22-222-22-222-22-22-222-22-22\hline
endtabular

enddocument