This tutorial walks through some basics for how to export results to Word format files or similar.
install.packages(c("rtf"), repos = "http://cran.r-project.org")
## Warning: package 'rtf' is in use and will not be installed
As a running example, let's build a regression model, whose coefficients we want to output:
set.seed(1)
x1 <- runif(100, 0, 1)
x2 <- rbinom(100, 1, 0.5)
y <- x1 + x2 + rnorm(100)
s1 <- summary(lm(y ~ x1))
s2 <- summary(lm(y ~ x1 + x2))
One of the easiest ways to move results from R to Word is simply to copy and paste them. R results are printed in ASCII, though, so the results don't necessarily copy well (e.g., tables tend to lose their formatting unless they're pasted into the Word document using a fixed-width font like Courier).
For example, we could just copy print coef(s) to the console and manually copy and paste the results:
round(coef(s2), 2)
## Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept) 0.07 0.24 0.28 0.78
## x1 0.92 0.36 2.52 0.01
## x2 0.89 0.19 4.57 0.00
Another, perhaps easier alternative, is to write the results to the console as a comma-separated value (CSV) format:
write.csv(round(coef(s2), 2))
## "","Estimate","Std. Error","t value","Pr(>|t|)"
## "(Intercept)",0.07,0.24,0.28,0.78
## "x1",0.92,0.36,2.52,0.01
## "x2",0.89,0.19,4.57,0
The output doesn't look very pretty in R and it won't look very pretty in Word, either, at least not right away. If you copy the CSV format and paste it into a Word document, it will look like a mess. But, if you select the pasted text, click the “Insert” menu, and press “Table”, a menu will open, one option of which is “Convert text to table…” Clicking this option, and selecting to “Separate text at” commmas, then pressing OK will produce a nicely formatted table, resembling the original R output.
As long as you can convert an R object (or set of R objects) to a table-like structure, you can use write.csv and follow the instructions above to easily move that object into Word.
Thus the biggest challenge for writing output to Word format is not the actual output, but the work of building a table-like structure that can easily be output. For example, let's build a nicer-looking results table that includes summary statistics and both of our regression models. First, we'll get all of our relevant statistics and then bind them together into a table:
r1 <- round(coef(s1), 2)
r2 <- round(coef(s2), 2)
# coefficients
c1 <- paste(r1[, 1], " (", r1[, 2], ")", sep = "")
c2 <- paste(r2[, 1], " (", r2[, 2], ")", sep = "")
# summary statistics
sigma <- round(c(s1$sigma, s2$sigma), 2)
rsq <- round(c(s1$adj.r.squared, s2$adj.r.squared), 2)
# sample sizes
n <- c(length(s1$residuals), length(s1$residuals))
Now let's bind this all together into a table and look at the resulting table:
outtab <- rbind(cbind(c(c1, ""), c2), sigma, rsq, n)
colnames(outtab) <- c("Model 1", "Model 2")
rownames(outtab) <- c("Intercept", "x1", "x2", "sigma", "Adj. R-Squared", "n")
outtab
## Model 1 Model 2
## Intercept "0.61 (0.23)" "0.07 (0.24)"
## x1 "0.79 (0.4)" "0.92 (0.36)"
## x2 "" "0.89 (0.19)"
## sigma "1.06" "0.97"
## Adj. R-Squared "0.03" "0.19"
## n "100" "100"
Then we can just write it to the console and follow the directions above to copy it to a nice table in Word:
write.csv(outtab)
## "","Model 1","Model 2"
## "Intercept","0.61 (0.23)","0.07 (0.24)"
## "x1","0.79 (0.4)","0.92 (0.36)"
## "x2","","0.89 (0.19)"
## "sigma","1.06","0.97"
## "Adj. R-Squared","0.03","0.19"
## "n","100","100"
Another way to output results directly from R to Word is to use the rtf package. This package is designed to write Rich-Text Format (RTF) files, but can also be used to write Word files. It's actually very simple to use. You simply need to have the package create a Word (.doc) or RTF file to write to, then you can add plain text paragraphs or anything that can be structured as a dataframe directly to the file. You can then open the file directly with Word, finding the resulting text, tables, etc. neatly embedded. A basic example pasting our regression coefficient table and the nicer looking table is shown below:
library(rtf)
rtffile <- RTF("rtf.doc") # this can be an .rtf or a .doc
addParagraph(rtffile, "This is the output of a regression coefficients:\n")
addTable(rtffile, as.data.frame(round(coef(s2), 2)))
addParagraph(rtffile, "\n\nThis is the nicer looking table we made above:\n")
addTable(rtffile, cbind(rownames(outtab), outtab))
done(rtffile)
You can then find the rtf.doc file in your working directory. Open it to take a look at the results.
The rtf package also allows you to specify additional options about fonts and the like, making it possible to write a considerable amount of your results directly from R. See ? rtf for full details.