Table and Figure cross-reference officer R - r

Question

I would like to be able to cross-reference a table or figure in a word document using the officer R package.
I have come across these materials so far but they do not seem to have a solution:
https://davidgohel.github.io/officer/articles/word.html#table-and-image-captions
and a similar question
add caption to flextable in docx
In both of these I can only insert a caption as a level 2 header and not a true table caption.
What I want to be able to do in Word is Insert -> Cross-reference and go to Reference type: Table and see my caption there. Right now I can only see the caption under Numbered item.
Does this functionality exist in officer or anywhere else?

Answer 1

In word, the table numbers use the { SEQ \\# arabic } pattern, but references to them use { REF bookmark \h }. We can use this to make new code which can reference a SEQ field.
code:
ft <- regulartable(head(iris)) # create flextable
str <- paste0(' REF ft \\h ') # create string to be used as reference to future bookmark
doc <- read_docx() %>%
body_add_par('This is my caption' , style = 'Normal') %>% # add caption
slip_in_seqfield(str = "SEQ Table \\# arabic",
style = 'Default Paragraph Font',
pos = "before") %>% # add number for table
body_bookmark('ft') %>% # add bookmark on the number
slip_in_text("Table ",
style = 'Default Paragraph Font',
pos = "before") %>% # add the word 'table'
body_add_flextable(value = ft, align = 'left') %>% # add flextable
body_add_break() %>% # insert a break (optional)
slip_in_text('As you can see in Table',
style = 'Default Paragraph Font',
pos = 'after') %>% # add the text you want before the table reference
slip_in_seqfield(str = str,
style = 'Default Paragraph Font',
pos = 'after') %>% # add the reference to the table you just added
slip_in_text(', there are a lot of iris flowers.',
style = 'Default Paragraph Font',
pos = 'after') %>% # add the rest of the text
print('Iris_test.docx') # print
Hope this helps :)

Answer 2

Just for the record, you can do this a bit easier now by using some helper functions from the {crosstable} package.
Disclaimer: I am the developer of that package and these functions were highly inspired by #morgan121's answer. Thanks Morgan!
Here is an example:
library(officer)
library(crosstable)
library(ggplot2)
options(crosstable_units="cm")
ft = regulartable(head(iris))
my_plot = ggplot(data = iris ) +
geom_point(mapping = aes(Sepal.Length, Petal.Length))
doc = read_docx() %>%
body_add_title("Dataset iris", 1) %>%
body_add_normal("Table \\#ref(table_iris) displays the 6 first rows of the iris dataset.") %>%
body_add_flextable(ft) %>%
body_add_table_legend("Iris head", bookmark="table_iris") %>%
body_add_normal("Let's add a figure as well. You can see in Figure \\#ref(fig_iris) that sepal length is somehow correlated with petal length.") %>%
body_add_figure_legend("Relation between Petal length and Sepal length", bookmark="fig_iris") %>%
body_add_gg2(my_plot, w=14, h=10, scale=1.5)
print(doc , 'Iris_test.docx')
More info on https://danchaltiel.github.io/crosstable/articles/crosstable-report.html.
As with morgan121's code, you have to select all the text in MS Word and press F9 twice for the numbers to update properly.