3MW (Bring tables to Word & Powerpoint with {flextable})

Author

Albert Rapp
August 21, 2024

Guten Tag!

Many greetings from Munich, Germany. Are you done with tables yet? I hope not. The R ecosystem has more to offer.

Over the last two weeks, we have covered the fantastic {gt} and {reactable} packages. Both are excellent at what they do.

{gt} has an impeccable workflow to create static tables and {reactable} is the ultra-champ at creating interactive tables. Today, we get to know another champion. Namely, {flextable}.

But before we do that that, time for two short little announcement:

Data Cleaning Master Class Part 2

I’m about to release Part 2 of my Data Cleaning Master Class. Right now, I’m in the midst of final video editing but then next week, I’ll release the next wave of data cleaning tutorials. 🥳 Part 2 of the course will

  • cover a myriad of data formats,

  • show you how to read them into R and

  • clean them so that you can work with that data.

I’m particularly proud to say that I do cover how to clean up Excel files as well (incl. pivot tables). So next time your coworker sends you an Excel file, you definitely know how to ingest and work with that data gracefully.

And finally a quick heads-up: Next week, the price of the course will go up to $185. So if you want to save some money on that, now’s your chance. You can get the course at

Data Cleaning With R Master Class

This course teaches you everything you need to know about cleaning data in R fast & efficiently.

{reactable} video tutorial

Looking for a video version of last week’s newsletter? Well, look no further. I’ve created a video intro on {reactable} with a couple more features that we didn’t even cover in the newsletter. Check it out on Youtube:

Now, let’s dive into this week’s issue.

What can {flextable} do for you?

The biggest feature of {flextable} is that it has super strong export capabilities to Microsoft Office. You know, pesky little files like Word documents or Powerpoint slides. Thus, if you frequently find yourself copying a data table over to Word or Powerpoint, then look no more. Let {flextable} handle that for you.

Mini Tutorial

Fake data

Let’s create a similar table that we have created in the last two weeks. By now, you probably know the data set by heart.

Base Layer

Just like with all the other table packages, the first step is really simple. Just throw your data into the flextable() function.

Use better column names

Now, let’s do better column names again. Let’s go for title-case. And the nice thing with {flextable} is that it allows a pipe-able code style like {gt}.

Title & Subtitle

For adding a nice title and subtitle to your plot, you can add so-called header lines.

Format numbers

The numbers in the revenue column correspond to dollar amounts. We can format them by specifying a column format with one of the colformat_*() functions. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as colformat_currency() so we’ll have to improvise with colformat_double().

Add groups

Now, I want to structure my tables into quarters. The easiest way to do that is to use the quarter column in our data set for grouping.

But flextable() doesn’t allow to do that inside of the function. Instead one has to pass in the data as a grouped data set.

Add summaries

For adding summaries to a table, {flextable} is actually one of the trickiest packages. You will have to calculate totals yourself and assemble a new data set.

Then, you can throw that into flextable() again.

Change row styling

To add a little bit more style and visual structure, let us make the group rows blue and the totals bold. For that, you can use the bg() and bold() functions to apply the styles. And to target specific rows, you need to set i to a function (using the ~ notation) that evaluates to TRUEs and FALSEs.

Export

Finally, we can make use of {flextable}'s fantastic export capabilities and export to Word…

…or to Powerpoint (though you might want to do that with a table that fits into a rectangular slide)

More Resources

Nice! With that we have learned the basic principles of {flextable}. If you want to learn more about this package, then one of my video courses dives into many details that will help you create beautiful tables. You can check it out at:

Making Beautiful Tables with R

Tables are often boring, hard to read, and, most importantly, they don't communicate effectively. In this course, Albert Rapp will show you that creating beautiful tables is just a matter of learning some important principles.

As always, if you have any questions, or just want to reach out, feel free to contact me by replying to this mail or finding me on Linkedin.

See you next week,
Albert 👋

Enjoyed this newsletter? Here are other ways I can help you:

Data Cleaning With R Master Class

This course teaches you everything you need to know about cleaning data in R fast & efficiently.

Insightful Data Visualizations for "Uncreative" R Users

In this course, I teach you how to create insightful data visualizations without being a design expert.

Making Beautiful Tables with R

Tables are often boring, hard to read, and, most importantly, they don't communicate effectively. In this course, I will show you that creating beautiful tables is just a matter of learning a few important principles.

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