Creating a officer MS Word Chart object within a Rmd code block

[shbshk]

I am trying to create Word document using inputs into a Shiny app.

The workflow would be:

1. User enters data into a Shiny app
2. The data is written to a Rmd
3. The Rmd is knitted to Word

I am trying to take the input of the user to create a MS Word Chart object in the final word file. Is there a way to add code chunks in the Rmd which produce MS Word Charts. I know officeR has the capability to create Word docs with MS Word Charts, but the package requires to write the chart to an existing Word document. In my case, I want to write the MS Word Chart in the Word document which is being created from an Rmd.

Thanks

[cderv]

I believe MS Chart in officeverse is powered by the mschart package;

Chapter 10 Charts with mschart | officeverse

Maybe it can be used in Rmd without officer ?
Otherwise, officedown is a way to mix officer feature with R Markdown

Chapter 4 officedown for Word | officeverse

Hope it helps

[shbshk]

@cderv Thanks for your response. I have gone through the documentations you mention in detail before and could not find any officeR or mscharts function to return a MSChart while knitting an Rmd. I have come up with the following solution but am not sure how scalable this is.
The process I followed was to

1. Set my YAML output as officedown::rdocx_document:
2. Add r code chunks where I needed the the MSCharts to be output
3. The code chunks would create the chart object (using mscharts::my_barchart ()),
4. Write the chart object to a temp word document (using officer::body_add_chart())
5. Inserting the chrt object back into the document (using officer::block_pour_docx())

Thoughts on this process? It seems a bit hacky; there might be a better/native way to do it using OfficeR/mscharts?

---
title: "MS Word with editable charts"
output:
  officedown::rdocx_document:
    reference_docx: WordTemplate.docx
    toc: yes
---

# Editable Chart1

```{r editable chart, echo=FALSE, include=TRUE}
library(mschart)
library(officer)
filename = paste0("Charts/Chart_1",format(Sys.time(), "%y%m%d%H%M%S"),".docx")

my_barchart <- ms_barchart(data = browser_data,
  x = "browser", y = "value", group = "serie")
my_barchart <- chart_settings( my_barchart, grouping = "stacked",
  gap_width = 50, overlap = 100 )

doc <- read_docx() %>%
  body_add_chart(chart = my_barchart, style = "centered") %>%
  print(target = filename)

block_pour_docx(filename)
``

# Editable Chart2

```{r editable chart2, echo=FALSE, include=TRUE}
library(mschart)
library(officer)
filename = paste0("Charts/Chart_2",format(Sys.time(), "%y%m%d%H%M%S"),".docx")

my_scatter <- ms_scatterchart(data = iris, x = "Sepal.Length",
  y = "Sepal.Width",  group = "Species")
my_scatter <- chart_data_fill(my_scatter,
  values = c(virginica = "#6FA2FF", versicolor = "#FF6161", setosa = "#81FF5B") )

doc <- read_docx() %>%
  body_add_chart(chart = my_scatter, style = "centered") %>%
  print(target = filename)

block_pour_docx(filename)
``

Which gives

[cderv]

@shbshk

could not find any officeR or mscharts function to return a MSChart while knitting an Rmd

As of 2020 it seems it was not possible from this SO question:

R add mschart to Rmarkdown

Probably still not possible...

@shbshk

Thoughts on this process? It seems a bit hacky; there might be a better/native way to do it using OfficeR/mscharts?

This seems like a good solution to me! In the R Markdown ecosystem there are a lot of post process of output (TeX, HTML, ...) so post processing your docx result using officer seems ok to me!

[shbshk]

Thanks for the response, I'll mark my solution as 'Solution'.