R help - Feb 2021 - ISO recommendations for plot output format from R to MS Word

I need to export plots (constructed with plot and with ggplot) from R
to be imported into a MS Word document.

I am working with MS Word for Mac version 16.16.10 (copyright 2018)
and R versions 3.6.3 and/or 4.0.3.

I have verified that the version of MS Word which I am working with
can import SVG exported from R via svglite.

What I am mostly worried about is that other people with possibly
different versions of MS Word will not be able to view the document
correctly.

Towards the goal of creating an MS Word document which others with
unspecified versions of MS Word can view correctly, in what format
should I export figures from R?

I am working with a fairly large number of figures so there is some
motivation towards a fully automated process.

I have searched various forums and archives, but much of the
information may be out of date, so I am hoping that you can help me
with some up to date information.

Thank you very much for any light you can shed on this problem.

Robert Dodier

On 2021/2/13 7:05, Robert Dodier wrote:
> I need to export plots (constructed with plot and with ggplot) from R
> to be imported into a MS Word document.
> 
> I am working with MS Word for Mac version 16.16.10 (copyright 2018)
> and R versions 3.6.3 and/or 4.0.3.
> 
> I have verified that the version of MS Word which I am working with
> can import SVG exported from R via svglite.
> 
> What I am mostly worried about is that other people with possibly
> different versions of MS Word will not be able to view the document
> correctly.
> 
On Windows, MS Word can not display the SVG imported. In my memory, the 
only fully supported vector graphic format is "emf" or "wmf"
(both a
same?). Encapsulated PostScript(EPS) seems to be supported with specific 
plugin (I am not very sure about it).

However, some figures produced by win.metafile() could display correctly 
in Word, but weird when convert to PDF.
> Towards the goal of creating an MS Word document which others with
> unspecified versions of MS Word can view correctly, in what format
> should I export figures from R?
> 
> I am working with a fairly large number of figures so there is some
> motivation towards a fully automated process.
> 
> I have searched various forums and archives, but much of the
> information may be out of date, so I am hoping that you can help me
> with some up to date information.
> 
> Thank you very much for any light you can shed on this problem.
> 
> Robert Dodier
>

On Fri, 12 Feb 2021 15:05:33 -0800
Robert Dodier <robert.dodier at gmail.com> wrote:
> Towards the goal of creating an MS Word document which others with
> unspecified versions of MS Word can view correctly, in what format
> should I export figures from R?
A cross-platform plotting device designed specifically for word
processors is devEMF. In my experience, best compatibility with Word
can be achieved by creating figures with parameters (emfPlus = TRUE,
emfPlusFont = FALSE, emfPlusRaster = TRUE), but I only checked Word
2003 and 2010 (for Windows).

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan

Hi, a quick follow-up about the question about putting R-generated
figures into MS Word.

I have found by experimenting with some figures and documents that if
I import an SVG figure generated by svglite (didn't try other output
functions), I can view it okay in my installation of MS Word (Word for
Mac 16.16.10), and it looks okay in MS Word for Windows (circa 2016 or
2018) on a laptop I have, and two other people can view it okay (one
on Mac and one on Windows). So that seems safe enough to go ahead.
YMMV.

I am informed that MS Word is actually storing a bitmap image of the
SVG figure, which is displayed by non-SVG-aware versions of Word. So
that seems like a good safeguard.

For the record, I converted the SVG to EPS, PNG, PDF, WMF, and EMF via
Imagemagick. EPS and PNG were tolerable, PDF was too fuzzy, and WMF
and EMF, at least as generated, could not be displayed (I was a little
surprised by that). There are, no doubt, many unanswered questions
here, which unfortunately I cannot take the time to explore right now.

In summary I found that importing SVG generated by svglite into MS
Word for Mac seems to work okay to generate a generally-readable file.
Perhaps this experience is useful in some way to others.

best,

Robert Dodier