[R] Transferring results from R to MS Word

Tom Backer Johnsen backer at psych.uib.no
Mon Oct 27 23:21:57 CET 2008


Felipe Carrillo wrote:
> Are you still can't get the data into R? I sent you this -mail last week, did you read it?

Yes I did read it, and I have installed the package and looked at the 
documentation.  What I (after an admittently superficial inspection due 
to limited available time this weekend, the choir I am a member of had a 
concert yesterday on a monumental mass by Gounod) do not at the moment 
see is what the advantage of these functions are over standard 
read.table () and write.table ().  I suppose I need to have another look.

Using write.table () or similar things has at least two disadvantages as 
far as I can see.  One is that it only works on objects which can be 
coerced into a table or frame.  With other types of objects like 
summary(lm(formula)) you get an error message.  Secondly, you end up 
with one file (or worksheet) for each thing you want to transfer, which 
may easily be a mess or confusing (or both).

That is why I would prefer something along the lines of HTML, which 
means that several things may be pasted into the same worksheet, based 
on a "keep things together that belong together" kind of attitude.  So, 
if you want one table combining means, standard deviations, and variable 
intercorrelations you do not want things in three different sheets or 
files, you want them in the same worksheet to begin with.

However, at the moment it seems that there are bugs in the R2HTML 
package, hopefully they will be eliminated in the near future.  There 
are also some parts of the documentation that I do not understand.  The 
list of functions includes things like HTML.lm, as far as I can see are 
invisible, both in respect to documentation and usage.

Tom



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