modify_table_styling: Modify Table Styling

In ddsjoberg/gtsummary: Presentation-Ready Data Summary and Analytic Result Tables

Modify Table Styling

Description

This function is for developers. This function has very little checking of the passed arguments, by design.

If you are not a developer, it's recommended that you use the following functions to make modifications to your table:

modify_header(), modify_spanning_header(), modify_column_hide(), modify_column_unhide(), modify_footnote_header(), modify_footnote_body(), modify_abbreviation(), modify_column_alignment(), modify_fmt_fun(), modify_indent(), modify_column_merge(), modify_missing_symbol(), modify_bold(), modify_italic().

This is a function provides control over the characteristics of the resulting gtsummary table by directly modifying .$table_styling.

Review the gtsummary definition vignette for information on .$table_styling objects.

Usage

modify_table_styling(
  x,
  columns,
  rows = NULL,
  label = NULL,
  spanning_header = NULL,
  hide = NULL,
  footnote = NULL,
  footnote_abbrev = NULL,
  align = NULL,
  missing_symbol = NULL,
  fmt_fun = NULL,
  text_format = NULL,
  undo_text_format = NULL,
  indent = NULL,
  text_interpret = "md",
  cols_merge_pattern = NULL
)

Arguments

x	(gtsummary) gtsummary object
columns	(tidy-select) Selector of columns in x$table_body
rows	(predicate expression) Predicate expression to select rows in x$table_body. Can be used to style footnote, formatting functions, missing symbols, and text formatting. Default is NULL. See details below.
label	(character) Character vector of column label(s). Must be the same length as columns.
spanning_header	(string) string with text for spanning header
hide	(scalar logical) Logical indicating whether to hide column from output
footnote	(string) string with text for footnote
footnote_abbrev	(string) string with abbreviation definition, e.g. "CI = Confidence Interval"
align	(string) String indicating alignment of column, must be one of c("left", "right", "center")
missing_symbol	(string) string indicating how missing values are formatted.
fmt_fun	(function) function that formats the statistics in the columns/rows in columns and rows
text_format, undo_text_format	(string) String indicated which type of text formatting to apply/remove to the rows and columns. Must be one of c("bold", "italic").
indent	(integer) An integer indicating how many space to indent text
text_interpret	(string) Must be one of "md" or "html" and indicates the processing function as gt::md() or gt::html(). Use this in conjunction with arguments for header and footnotes.
cols_merge_pattern	(string) glue-syntax string indicating how to merge columns in x$table_body. For example, to construct a confidence interval use "{conf.low}, {conf.high}". The first column listed in the pattern string must match the single column name passed in ⁠columns=⁠.

rows argument

The rows argument accepts a predicate expression that is used to specify rows to apply formatting. The expression must evaluate to a logical when evaluated in x$table_body. For example, to apply formatting to the age rows pass rows = variable == "age". A vector of row numbers is NOT acceptable.

A couple of things to note when using the rows argument.

1. You can use saved objects to create the predicate argument, e.g. rows = variable == letters[1].

2. The saved object cannot share a name with a column in x$table_body. The reason for this is that in tbl_merge() the columns are renamed, and the renaming process cannot disambiguate the variable column from an external object named variable in the following expression rows = .data$variable = .env$variable.

cols_merge_pattern argument

There are planned updates to the implementation of column merging. Currently, this function replaces the numeric column with a formatted character column following ⁠cols_merge_pattern=⁠. Once gt::cols_merge() gains the ⁠rows=⁠ argument the implementation will be updated to use it, which will keep numeric columns numeric. For the vast majority of users, the planned change will be go unnoticed.

If this functionality is used in conjunction with tbl_stack() (which includes tbl_uvregression()), there is potential issue with printing. When columns are stack AND when the column-merging is defined with a quosure, you may run into issues due to the loss of the environment when 2 or more quosures are combined. If the expression version of the quosure is the same as the quosure (i.e. no evaluated objects), there should be no issues. Regardless, this argument is used internally with care, and it is not recommended for users.

See Also

See gtsummary internals vignette

Other Advanced modifiers: modify_column_merge(), modify_indent()

ddsjoberg/gtsummary documentation built on June 11, 2025, 10:29 p.m.