mschart: Chart Generation for 'Microsoft Word', 'Microsoft Excel' and...

In mschart: Chart Generation for 'Microsoft Word', 'Microsoft Excel' and 'Microsoft PowerPoint' Documents

Chart Generation for 'Microsoft Word', 'Microsoft Excel' and 'Microsoft PowerPoint' Documents

Description

It lets R users create Microsoft Office charts from data, and then add title, legends, and annotations to the chart object.

The graph produced is a Microsoft graph, which means that it can be edited in your Microsoft software and that the underlying data are available.

The package will not allow you to make the same charts as with ggplot2. It allows only a subset of the charts possible with 'Office Chart'. The package is often used to industrialize graphs that are then consumed and annotated by non-R users.

The following chart types are available.

Classical charts (Office 2007+ DrawingML pipeline):

• bar charts: ms_barchart()

• line charts: ms_linechart()

• scatter plots: ms_scatterchart()

• area charts: ms_areachart()

• pie and doughnut charts: ms_piechart()

• bubble charts: ms_bubblechart()

• radar (spider) charts: ms_radarchart()

• stock charts (HLC and OHLC): ms_stockchart()

chartEx charts (Office 2016+ pipeline; older viewers show a placeholder):

• box-and-whisker: ms_boxplotchart()

• funnel: ms_funnelchart()

• histogram: ms_histogramchart()

• pareto: ms_paretochart()

• sunburst: ms_sunburstchart()

• treemap: ms_treemapchart()

• waterfall: ms_waterfallchart()

Several classical chart types can be combined on a single chart, with an optional secondary axis (y or x), using ms_chart_combine().

These functions create a 'chart' object that can be customized:

• by using options specific to the chart (with chart_settings()),

• by changing the options related to the axes (with chart_ax_x() and chart_ax_y()),

• by changing the options related to the labels (with chart_data_labels()),

• by changing the colors, line widths, ... with functions

  • chart_labels_text()

  • chart_data_fill()

  • chart_data_line_style()

  • chart_data_line_width()

  • chart_data_size()

  • chart_data_smooth()

  • chart_data_stroke()

  • chart_data_symbol()

• by changing the general theme with function chart_theme(),

• by changing the title labels with function chart_labels().

You can add a chart into a slide in PowerPoint with function ph_with.ms_chart().

You can add a chart into a Word document with function body_add_chart().

You can add a chart into an Excel sheet with function sheet_add_drawing.ms_chart().

Series styling properties by chart type

Not all series styling properties have an effect on every chart type. A warning is emitted when a property is set on a chart type that does not support it.

Classical charts:

Property	bar	line	area	scatter	stock	radar	bubble	pie
fill	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
colour	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
symbol		x		x	x	x
size		x		x	x	x
line_width	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
line_style		x		x	x	x
smooth		x		x
labels_fp	x	x	x	x		x		x

chartEx charts expose a narrower set of styling knobs, since most visual aspects are computed by Office from the data (bins, levels, connectors, ...). For these, prefer the chart-type-specific chart_settings() method when one is available (e.g. for pareto and boxplot: chart_settings(x, line = fp_border(...))).

Property	boxplot	funnel	histogram	pareto	sunburst	treemap	waterfall
fill	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
colour	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
labels_fp	x	x	x	x	x	x	x

Two arguments often confused: asis and write_data

asis is a constructor argument (on ms_barchart(), ms_linechart() and most other classical constructors). It describes the input shape of the data frame:

• asis = FALSE (default): long format, with a group column that splits the rows into series. mschart reshapes the data internally.

• asis = TRUE: wide format, with one column per series. y accepts a vector of series column names.

write_data is an embed-time argument of sheet_add_drawing.ms_chart() for the Excel pipeline. It decides whether mschart writes the chart's data into the target sheet (TRUE, the default) or leaves you in charge of placing it via officer::sheet_write_data() (FALSE, recommended for non-trivial workbooks).

The two arguments are independent: a chart built with asis = TRUE can still be embedded with either write_data = TRUE or write_data = FALSE.

Author(s)

Maintainer: David Gohel [e-mail]

Authors:

• David Gohel [e-mail]

Other contributors:

• ArData [copyright holder]

• YouGov [funder]

• Jan Marvin Garbuszus (support for openxlsx2 and combo charts) [contributor]

• Stefan Moog [e-mail] (support to set chart and plot area color and border, fix for line style none) [contributor]

• Eli Daniels [e-mail] [contributor]

• Marlon Molina (added table feature) [contributor]

• Rokas Klydzia (custom labels) [contributor]

• David Camposeco [e-mail] (chart_data_smooth function) [contributor]

• Dan Joplin (fix scatter plot data structure) [contributor]

See Also

https://ardata-fr.github.io/officeverse/

mschart documentation built on May 17, 2026, 1:09 a.m.