How to Automate PowerPoint Slidedecks with R

Written by Matt Dancho on September 22, 2020


This article is part of a R-Tips Weekly, a weekly video tutorial that shows you step-by-step how to do common R coding tasks.

Your boss lives on PowerPoint decks. Do you need to create a Slide Deck every week?

Let’s learn how to automate PowerPoint with R, using officer and tidyverse.

(Click image to play video)


Here’s a common situation, you have to make a Monday Morning Slide Deck. It’s the same deck each week, just date ranges for your data change. Here’s how to automate this process with R!

First, here’s what you need to make - A weekly Stock Report.

Weekly Stock Report


Thinking like a programmer, you can collect your stock data using date ranges.

Stock Data Using Date Ranges

With a little bit of data wrangling with the tidyverse, you’ve got your table extracted & formatted!

Tidyverse Wrangling

Tidyverse Wrangling


Then you use timetk to make a sweet plot.

Timetk package


Plotting stock data


Then you use officer to add the table and plot to powerpoint.

Officer R package

You’ve just automated your Monday Morning PowerPoint in R. BOOM! 💥💥💥

Boom


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