Data frame to word table?

Question

Is there a way to easily turn a data frame into a Word table via rmarkdown?

If I use rmarkdown in RStudio to create a Word document I get a nicely printed table but it is then not recognised as a Word-table. Can it be done at all?

   ```{r}
   name_of_df
   ```

Answer 1

EDIT: ReporteRs is still maintained but will not evolve anymore. Use officer and flextable instead :

library(officer)
library(flextable)
library(magrittr)

# Create flextable object
ft <- flextable(data = mtcars) %>% 
  theme_zebra %>% 
  autofit
# See flextable in RStudio viewer
ft

# Create a temp file
tmp <- tempfile(fileext = ".docx")

# Create a docx file
read_docx() %>% 
  body_add_flextable(ft) %>% 
  print(target = tmp)

# open word document
browseURL(tmp)

END EDIT

Hi you can also try package ReporteRs to turn a data.frame into a Word table, the function to do it is FlexTable :

library(ReporteRs)
library(magrittr)

docx( ) %>% 
  addFlexTable( mtcars %>%
                  FlexTable( header.cell.props = cellProperties( background.color =  "#003366" ),
                             header.text.props = textBold( color = "white" ),
                             add.rownames = TRUE ) %>%
                  setZebraStyle( odd = "#DDDDDD", even = "#FFFFFF" ) ) %>%
  writeDoc( file = "exemple.docx" )

# open the Word document
browseURL("exemple.docx")

With markdown, i think this work only with HTML :

---
title: "HTML table"
output: html_document
---

```{r, results='asis'}
library(ReporteRs)
tabl = FlexTable( mtcars,
                  header.cell.props = cellProperties( background.color = "#003366" ),
                  header.text.props = textBold( color = "white" ),
                  add.rownames = TRUE )
tabl = setZebraStyle( tabl, odd = "#DDDDDD", even = "#FFFFFF" )
cat(as.html(tabl))
```

Here an other example on how to create a word document with ReporteRs :

library(ReporteRs)
# Create a docx object
doc = docx()
# add a document title
doc = addParagraph( doc, "A FlexTable example", stylename = "TitleDoc" )
# add a section title
doc = addTitle( doc, "How to turn a data.frame into a Word table", level = 1 )
# some text
doc = addParagraph( doc, "We use the mtcars dataset as example.", stylename = "DocDefaults" )
# add a table
MyFTable = FlexTable( data = mtcars[1:10, ], add.rownames = TRUE )
# format body content
MyFTable[3:4, "cyl"] = cellProperties( background.color = "red" )
MyFTable["Valiant", ] = cellProperties( background.color = "blue" )
doc = addFlexTable(doc, MyFTable)
# write the doc
writeDoc( doc, file = "exemple.docx" )
# open the Word doc
browseURL("exemple.docx")

For more example you can visit http://davidgohel.github.io/ReporteRs/word.html

Answer 2

Here is a very low-tech (and fast) way to do it

source("http://michael.hahsler.net/SMU/EMIS7332/R/copytable.R") 

and run the example

copytable(summary(iris))

now copy&paste and you are done!

Just for reference, here is also the source code for the copytable function:

library(xtable)

copytable <- function(x, ...) {
  f <- tempfile(fileext=".html")
  print(xtable(x, ...), "html", file = f)
  browseURL(f)
}

Answer 3

You can use the rmarkdown and knitr packages. Here is an example function, where df is the data.frame, output_file is the output file name and output_dir the output folder. Extra named argument are sent to rmarkdown::render:

df2word <- function(df, output_file = "table.doc", output_dir = ".", ...) {
  f <- tempfile(fileext =".Rmd" )
  cat(file = f, '```{r, echo = FALSE}
                  knitr::kable(df)
                 ```', append = TRUE)
  rmarkdown::render(f, output_file = output_file, output_dir = output_dir, ...)
  unlink(f)
  file.path(output_dir, output_file)
}

out <- df2word(mtcars)
browseURL(out)

Of course you can adapt the code to be more flexible.

It is though flexible enough to allow you to extract other formats too, e.g. html:

out <- df2word(mtcars, output_file = "table.html")
browseURL(out)

or pdf:

out <- df2word(mtcars, output_file = "table.pdf", output_format = rmarkdown::pdf_document())
browseURL(out)