R ReporteRs: Editing Existing Slides

Question

I have a pptx presentation that I need to update frequently with the graphs that I generate using the R script. I would like to automate the replacement of graphs without having to copy and paste between the screens a whole bunch of times. I play with the ReporteRs package, and it seems promising, but I can’t understand how easy it is to replace the graphs that are already in the presentation. All ReporteR documentation shows that you need to add a new slide, and then place your charts on this new slide. Is there any way to say: "delete the graph on slide 7 and replace it with the graph XXX?" Is ReporteR the best package for this?

Answer 1

Try:

library(DescTools) # create a new PP instance pp <- GetNewPP() # create your plt and insert into pp barplot(1:5) pic <- PpPlot(width=10, height=5, pp=pp) # add a new slide PpAddSlide() # new plot on new slide, just to make it difficult to go back barplot(10:5) pic2 <- PpPlot(width=10, height=5, pp=pp) # get a collection of slides slides <- pp[["ActivePresentation"]][["Slides"]] # maybe convenient to go back to slide 1 slides$Item(1)$Select() # get a handle to slide 1 slide1 <- slides$Item(1) # get handle to any pic on the slide pic1 <- slide1[["Shapes"]]$Item(1) # delete it pic1$Delete() # create and insert a new one barplot(rep(1,5), col="red") PpPlot(width=10, height=5, pp=pp) 

Answer 2

According to the ReporteRs documentation ReporteRs this should be relatively simple. As @lawyeR says, this is about bookmarks. You can find examples from the author of the package here .

As an example, almost verbatim, from this link, the code will look like this:

 mydoc = pptx(template = 'examples/pp_simple_example.pptx' ) myplot = qplot(Sepal.Length, Petal.Length, data = iris, color = Species, size = Petal.Width, alpha = I(0.7)) # This is the important line, note the 'bookmark' pertaining to slide mydoc = addSlide( mydoc, slide.layout = 'Title and Content', bookmark=2) # change title mydoc = addTitle( mydoc, 'my new graph') # add the plot mydoc = addPlot( mydoc, print, x = myplot ) # save changes to new file writeDoc( mydoc, 'examples/pp_replacement.pptx' ) 

As mentioned below, the maintainer fixed the error. Now you can replace the slides. As you noticed, this will replace the entire slide. Despite a slight inconvenience at the beginning, you can easily customize the script to add the same name, text, etc. to the slide, and you can easily copy the slide over and over again. At the same time, you can also quickly change any text if something changes (food for thought).

Answer 3

With ReporteRs (formerly R2DOCX), I believe that you can use bookmarks when creating Word files to find and insert graphs, and there may be an equivalent in PowerPoint.

You should also look at the DescTools package. This is fairly easy to learn and quite capable, actually simpler than ReporteRs .

You can create a template and make all your headlines and write in the template. Then you can place bookmarks with Insert / Bookmarks to which you want to add R-graphics. You must save your plots in an R object named just like the bookmark is named. Then, every time you re-run your code, DescTools starts with a template and inserts the graphics in the right places.

This snippet starts the process by creating a “report” from the template.

 library(DescTools) library(RDCOMClient) report <- GetNewWrd(template="C:/Users/[your path to the template.docx") 

With this workflow, you can move text and graphic bookmarks whatever you want, and do text processing in Word in a template, and then paste the graphics in R. I have code that puts each graphic in a list and runs through the list at the end of R , and both create and insert each of the graphs.

Now, can you do something similar in PowerPoint, I don’t know.