Why α symbol turns into <U+03B1> after flextable and officer update?

Question

As in the title: before the update exported .docx file contained α symbol - after the update exported .docx file displays <U+03B1>. Does anyone know what could be the reason?

Answer 1

U+03B1 is the unicode for the character α, which you mentioned.

If you are using the α symbol directly in officer you might need to instead supply the unicode directly with \U03B1.

# Using the symbol directly
cat("α")
> a 

# Using the supplied unicode
cat("\U03B1")
> α

^{Created on 2021-01-21 by the reprex package (v0.3.0)}