apa_flextable: Convert data to flextable consistent with APA style

In apa7: Facilitate Writing Documents in American Psychological Association Style, Seventh Edition

Convert data to flextable consistent with APA style

Description

The apa_flextable function performs a number of formatting operations on the data before and after the data are sent to flextable. See Details.

Usage

apa_flextable(
  data,
  row_title_column = NULL,
  row_title_align = "left",
  row_title_prefix = "",
  row_title_sep = " ",
  row_title_border = list(color = "gray20", style = "solid", width = 1),
  left_column_padding = 20,
  col_keys = colnames(data),
  cwidth = 0.75,
  cheight = 0.25,
  header_align_vertical = c("top", "middle", "bottom"),
  separate_headers = TRUE,
  apa_style = TRUE,
  font_family = NULL,
  font_size = 12,
  text_color = "black",
  border_color = "black",
  border_width = 0.5,
  line_spacing = 2,
  horizontal_padding = 3,
  table_align = "left",
  layout = "autofit",
  table_width = 1,
  markdown = TRUE,
  markdown_header = markdown,
  markdown_body = markdown,
  no_markdown_columns = NULL,
  no_markdown_columns_header = NULL,
  no_format_columns = NULL,
  auto_format_columns = TRUE,
  column_formats = NULL,
  pretty_widths = TRUE,
  add_breaks_between_spanners = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

data	data.frame or tibble
row_title_column	Column name or tidyselect function. column to group rows
row_title_align	alignment of row title ("left", "center", "right")
row_title_prefix	text to be added to each title
row_title_sep	separator for prefix
row_title_border	list of flextable styles
left_column_padding	Number of points the left column is padded (only relevant when there is a row_title_column and row_title_align = "left")
col_keys	column keys passed to flextable (defaults data column names)
cwidth	initial cell width in inches
cheight	initial cell height in inches
header_align_vertical	vertical alignment of headers. Can be "top", "middle", or "bottom"
separate_headers	separate header rows (default: TRUE)
apa_style	apply apa_style function (default: TRUE)
font_family	font family
font_size	font size
text_color	text color
border_color	border color
border_width	border width in pixels
line_spacing	spacing between lines
horizontal_padding	horizontal padding (in pixels)
table_align	table alignment ("left", "center", "right")
layout	table layout ("autofit", "fixed")
table_width	table width (in pixels, 0 for auto)
markdown	apply markdown formatting to header and body
markdown_header	apply markdown formatting to header
markdown_body	apply markdown formatting to body
no_markdown_columns	body columns that should not be treated as markdown
no_markdown_columns_header	column headers that should not be treated as markdown
no_format_columns	Column name or tidyselect function. selected columns are not formatted
auto_format_columns	if true, will attempt to format some columns automatically
column_formats	a column_formats object
pretty_widths	apply pretty_widths function
add_breaks_between_spanners	add breaks between spanners if TRUE
...	arguments passed to apa_style

Details

Roughly speaking, apa_flextable performs these operations by default:

1. Apply as_grouped_data and restructure row titles, if row_title is specified.

2. Format data with apa_format_columns if auto_format_columns = TRUE

3. Separate headers into multiple header rows if separate_headers = TRUE

4. Apply flextable::flextable

5. Apply flextable::surround to make borders to separate row groups, if any.

6. Apply the apa_style function (table formatting and markdown conversion) if apa_style = TRUE

7. Apply pretty_widths if pretty_widths = TRUE

Value

flextable::flextable

Examples

library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
library(flextable)
mtcars %>%
  dplyr::select(vs, am, gear, carb) |>
  tidyr::pivot_longer(-vs,  names_to = "Variable") |>
  dplyr::summarise(Mean = round(mean(value), 2),
                   SD = round(sd(value), 2),
                   .by = c(Variable,vs)) |>
  dplyr::mutate(vs = factor(vs, levels = 0:1, labels = c("Automatic", "Manual"))) |>
  apa_flextable(row_title_column= vs,  row_title_align = "center") |>
  align(j = 2:3, align = "center")

apa7 documentation built on May 26, 2026, 5:07 p.m.