officer R package

Make corporate reporting with minimum hassle

The officer package lets R users manipulate Word (.docx) and PowerPoint (*.pptx) documents. In short, one can add images, tables and text into documents from R. An initial document can be provided; contents, styles and properties of the original document will then be available. It also supports the writing of ‘RTF’ documents and basic manipulation of Excel (‘.xlsx’) workbooks.

Ressources

The help pages are in a bookdown located at:

https://ardata-fr.github.io/officeverse/

Manuals are available at:

https://davidgohel.github.io/officer/.

Word documents

The read_docx() function will read an initial Word document (an empty one by default) and lets you modify its content later.

The package provides functions to add R outputs into a Word document:

• images: produce your plot in png or emf files and add them into the document, as a whole paragraph or inside a paragraph.
• tables: add data.frames as tables, format is defined by the associated Word table style.
• text: add text as paragraphs or inside an existing paragraph, format is defined by the associated Word paragraph and text styles.
• field codes: add Word field codes inside paragraphs. Field codes is an old feature of MS Word to create calculated elements such as tables of contents, automatic numbering and hyperlinks.

File generation is performed with the print function.

import Word document in a data.frame

The function docx_summary() reads and imports content of a Word document into a data.frame. The function handles paragraphs, tables and section breaks. The function docx_comments() reads comments of a Word document and organise the results into a data.frame.

PowerPoint documents

The function read_pptx() will read an initial PowerPoint document (an empty one by default) and let you modify its content later.

The package provides functions to add R outputs into existing or new PowerPoint slides:

• images: produce your plot in png or emf files and add them in a slide.
• tables: add data.frames as tables, format is defined by the associated PowerPoint table style.
• text: add text as paragraphs or inside an existing paragraph, format is defined in the corresponding layout of the slide.

In a PowerPoint document, one can set a slide as selected and reach a particular shape (and remove it or add text).

File generation is performed with the print() function.

import PowerPoint document in a data.frame

The pptx_summary() function reads and imports content of a PowerPoint document into a data.frame. The function handles paragraphs, tables and images.

Extensions

Tables and package flextable

The package flextable brings a full API to produce nice tables and use them with packages officer and rmarkdown.

Vector graphics with package rvg

The package rvg brings an API to produce nice vector graphics that can be embedded in PowerPoint documents or Excel workbooks with officer.

Native office charts with package mschart

The package mschart combined with officer can produce native office charts in PowerPoint and Word documents.

Advance Word documents with R Markdown with package officedown

The package officedown facilitates the formatting of Microsoft Word documents produced by R Markdown documents.

Installation

You can get the development version from GitHub:

devtools::install_github("davidgohel/officer")

Or the latest version on CRAN:

install.packages("officer")

Getting help

If you have questions about how to use the package, visit Stack Overflow’s officer tag and post your question there. I usually read them and answer when possible.

Contributing to the package

Code of Conduct

Anyone getting involved in this package agrees to our Code of Conduct.

Bug reports

Bugs are reported through GitHub issues. The issue form requires a reproducible example (a reprex) and the output of sessionInfo(); reports missing these elements are closed without further response. The more reproducible your report, the more time can go into investigating the bug rather than reconstructing it.

For usage questions (“how do I do X with officer”), please read https://ardata-fr.github.io/officeverse/ or https://davidgohel.github.io/officer/ or use Stack Overflow with the officer tag instead.

Pull requests

Before writing any code, please open an issue describing the change you have in mind and the reason for it. The proposal needs to be discussed and explicitly validated by the maintainer before work starts; pull requests for features that have not gone through this step will not be considered, no matter how well crafted. This isn’t meant to discourage contributions, only to make sure the time you invest goes into a change that will actually land.

Pull requests are accepted on a case-by-case basis: once a proposal has been agreed in an issue, the maintainer will invite you to open a PR for that specific change. Unsolicited PRs that bypass this step will be closed.

This policy keeps the package coherent: officer’s internals are shared with several downstream packages (flextable, officedown, rvg), and changes that look local often have wider implications. Aligning on the design in an issue first saves time on both sides.

When invited to open a PR, please include:

• the new function(s) with code and roxygen tags, including runnable examples
• documentation updates (vignette section if relevant)
• corresponding tests under tests/testthat

Run rhub::check_for_cran() locally before submitting; CI will run the full check suite on the PR.