I just installed the new version of RStudio and was surprised that the default output for word documents changed in R Markdown. The design looks more modern in general, but I cannot get around the decision of left-aligning the subtitle while the title and date is centered.
I couldn't find anything documented in the release notes. Is it because of a new version of Pandoc, or what's happening?
And is there a way to change these defaults when knitting to a Word document (other than using a template everytime)? It might seem like something small, but it means that I need to manually center the subtitle, reduce the huge font size of the title and change the title's color to something that better fits the overall theme after every knit. Or is there maybe a way to adapt these small things in the YAML header?
I'm really not sure about your case, but MS Office itself has been undergoing some change in default theme (including Calibri replaced by Aptos).
So if R Markdown is simply setting a Style (like "Title" or "Paragraph"; Formatvorlagen in your screenshot) and letting Word take care of the exact format of the Style, that would explain the differences you see, which are changes in Word default, not RMarkdown. I'm not sure how to change it back, but there are a few articles on the Web that may be relevant.
Thanks for the reply. I think its rather unlikely an issue with MS Office. I just switched back to RStudio 2024.04.2 and I get the normal styled Word documents again - both on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 22.04. After installing RStudio 2024.09.0 once again, R Markdown renders the new style.
Since Pandoc is responsible for the rendering to Word there must be some change with the Pandoc version deployed with RStudio? At least that would be my best guess.
I guess there is nothing I can do about it then? Maybe if I'd use Pandoc through the terminal, but that's even more cumbersome than changing the formating manually after every render ... I love it when developers change things for no reason.
There will be a reference.docx file with the Pandoc install somewhere in the RStudio installation. That file is what Pandoc uses as its base file when assembling a Word document. If you can find that file you could check if the style is causing the text to not be centred. If its the reference.docx file then you could raise the issue with Pandoc and hopefully they will fix it. If its not the Pandoc base file then the issue may be with RMarkdown and how its translated ultimately to the Word file.
