Scoping complex tables with TH that spans across multiple pages AND has a footnote link on the TH

Thank you both so much for your help!

Now that I artifacted the duplicate headers (including the link), I now keep getting this error: “"Link" annotation is not nested inside a "Link" structure element”

I artifacted the footnote and then I deleted the link tag...was that the wrong move?

Hello ​@cmvarga5 

I hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out. Sorry for the trouble you had.

In addition to what our community product expert has shared, because this is one logical table that continues across pages, keep all rows under a single <Table> structure rather than creating a separate table for each page. Your current approach—retaining the meaningful header structure once and treating later-page header/footer copies as pagination repeats—can work, provided those copies are genuinely identical. The thread indicates that the table repeats both its header and footer and that you have already moved the continuation-page <TD> elements into the first <TBody>.

For the grouped headers:
Tag each genuine header cell as <TH>.
Set the correct ColSpan/RowSpan values for every merged cell.
Use Scope only where the relationship is unambiguous. PDF scope values describe row/column relationships; they do not provide HTML-style rowgroup or colgroup behavior.
For a spanning group header that applies only to a particular block of rows, explicit ID/Headers associations are safer than relying on Scope alone. Acrobat supports correcting cell types and span attributes, but complex table relationships usually require detailed work in the Tags panel.
PDF type.

Regarding the footnote link: if the later-page header rows are artifacted as duplicate visual content, the repeated footnote links should not remain as active, untagged link annotations. Artifact or remove the duplicate link annotations along with those repeated copies. Keep one meaningful footnote reference in the retained <TH>:

Check this article for more information:

Edit document structure with the Content and Tags panels (Acrobat Pro).

I hope this helps, and please reach out if you need any assistance.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

I’m kind of confused, in that Adobe Acrobat isn’t the primary tool for generating documents like you’re describing.

How are you creating your tables in PDF files? Which application, and how are you generating your PDFs from said publication?

Randy