Getting started with R Markdown in RStudio

Let's recapitulate, that R Markdown uses various technologies and is seamlessly embedded in RStudio.

Creating your first R Markdown document

To create an R Markdown document, perform the following steps:

  1. First, click on the new file icon in RStudio and select R Markdown....
    Creating your first R Markdown document
  2. This will open a new popup window where you can adjust a variety of settings.
    Creating your first R Markdown document
  3. For our first document, we will leave all these settings as they are. You may change the Title and the Author name.
  4. After hitting the OK button, RStudio will automatically open a new prefilled .Rmd file.
    Creating your first R Markdown document
  5. For a first test run, just click on the Knit HTML button with the small ball of yarn icon before the corresponding text.
    Creating your first R Markdown document

    As you can see, the knitted file opens by default in a preview window.

  6. Instead of using the default option, it is recommended that you change the settings so that RStudio opens the output of a knitted .Rmd file in a dedicated viewer pane. Click on the small down-pointing arrow, to the right of the Knit HTML button, and check View in Pane to enable the pane view.
    Creating your first R Markdown document
  7. With this setting, it is now possible to write and generate R Markdown documents side-by-side, and that too, in a very comfortable manner:
    Creating your first R Markdown document