footnote function from kableExtra in R returns LateX error: multicol in Rmd file while knitting it to a PDF

Question

I was using footnote function of kableExtra package to write a footnote on a table, but I get the following LaTeX error:

! LaTeX Error: File `mulicol.sty' not found.

Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)

Enter file name: 
! Emergency stop.
<read *> 

l.126 

pandoc.exe: Error producing PDF
Error: pandoc document conversion failed with error 43
Ejecución interrumpida

The code that I am running is:

---
output:
pdf_document:
  toc: yes
  toc_depth: 5
  keep_tex: yes
html_document:
  theme: united
  toc: yes
classoption: table
header-includes:
  - \usepackage{array}
  - \usepackage{float}
  - \usepackage{xcolor}
  - \usepackage{mulicol}
---

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
```

```{r results='asis'}
options(kableExtra.latex.load_packages = FALSE) 
require(kableExtra)
cat(kable(head(cars),"latex",digits=c(1,1), longtable =TRUE,row.names=FALSE, 
caption = "Descriptive analysis for the")%>%footnote(general= "Repeatability 
(%CV) = ")
      )
```

Can anyone help me with this issue?

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

The same problem occurs for many LaTeX packages, where the error message is always:

! LaTeX Error: File `packagename.sty' not found.

For your case need to download the multicol package from ctan.org, unzip it and upload multicol.sty to the same directory your Rmd document is in.

Props go to this answer on the TeX stackexchange.

EDIT:

For the multicol package, another step is needed. See the README of the multicol package once downloaded.