officer version 0.1.6

David Gohel - 2017/09/13

It’s time to announce the release of officer version 0.1.6. It allows to generate Microsoft documents from R; supported formats are Word and PowerPoint. It does come with other new packages¹:

flextable: produces sophisticated tables.
rvg: produces vector graphics for PowerPoints
mschart: produces native Microsoft charts

Package officer is the reboot of ReporteRs. It’s better, faster and does only rely on R.²

Example

Let’s have a demo. I have made a video for impatients:

First load packages:

library(officer)
library(flextable)
library(rvg)
library(mschart)
library(magrittr)
library(ggplot2)

We will use the following dataset:

Download file data.RDS

data <- readRDS(here("static/files/melanoma.RDS"))
regulartable(data) %>% theme_vanilla() %>% autofit()

Status	Gender	Ulceration	n	Mean	SD
Alive	Female	Absent	68	1.693	2.004
Alive	Female	Present	23	2.972	2.593
Alive	Male	Absent	24	1.468	1.719
Alive	Male	Present	19	4.319	2.423
Melanoma	Female	Absent	8	2.139	1.184
Melanoma	Female	Present	20	4.724	4.128
Melanoma	Male	Absent	8	3.266	4.681
Melanoma	Male	Present	21	5.143	2.862
Non-melanoma	Female	Absent	3	1.667	1.141
Non-melanoma	Female	Present	4	3.302	3.713
Non-melanoma	Male	Absent	4	2.420	2.499
Non-melanoma	Male	Present	3	8.053	4.019

First let’s create a ggplot object:

gg <- ggplot(data, aes(x = Ulceration , y = Mean, colour = Gender, size = n)) + 
  geom_point() + 
  facet_wrap(~Status ) + 
  theme_minimal()
gg

Then a summary table:

ft <- regulartable(data = head(data)) %>% 
  theme_booktabs() %>% 
  set_header_labels( n = "#", Mean = "\u03D1", SD = "\u03C3") %>% 
  color(i = ~ n < 4, color = "wheat") %>% 
  autofit() 
ft

Status	Gender	Ulceration	#	ϑ	σ
Alive	Female	Absent	68	1.693	2.004
Alive	Female	Present	23	2.972	2.593
Alive	Male	Absent	24	1.468	1.719
Alive	Male	Present	19	4.319	2.423
Melanoma	Female	Absent	8	2.139	1.184
Melanoma	Female	Present	20	4.724	4.128

A Microsoft chart:

scatter_ms <- ms_scatterchart(data = data, x = "Mean", y = "n", group = "Status")

And gather them in a new PowerPoint document:

read_pptx() %>% 
  # add a slide then the flextable
  add_slide(layout = "Title and Content", master = "Office Theme") %>% 
  ph_with(ft, location = ph_location_type(type="body") ) %>% 
  # add a slide then the ggplot
  add_slide(layout = "Title and Content", master = "Office Theme") %>% 
  ph_with(dml(code = print(gg)), location = ph_location_type(type="body")) %>% 
  # add a slide then the microsoft chart
  add_slide(layout = "Title and Content", master = "Office Theme") %>% 
  ph_with(scatter_ms, location = ph_location_type(type="body")) %>% 
  # generate pptx
  print(target = here("static/files/melanoma.pptx")) %>% 
  invisible()

Download file melanoma.pptx - view with office web viewer

Documentation

The documentation of the packages can be found here:

officer: https://davidgohel.github.io/officer
flextable: https://davidgohel.github.io/flextable
mschart: https://ardata-fr.github.io/mschart

What’s next

I will work later on:

Fix issues if any.
Add a minimal support for Excel files with flextables, vector graphics.
Add pages headers and footers support for Word files.

I will write more about these in future posts.↩︎
ReporteRs exists since beginning of 2014. In the beginning, everything was under control, I was able to help or debug when necessary. But then the package became more popular and support started to be painful; because of rJava dependency and other reasons. The best solution was to rewrite the package so that I could do something better without breaking existing codes of users that choosed ReporteRs…↩︎