Alignment/fitting of a flextable to page width in R

Question

I'm creating a pretty basic report adding small tables to a docx in a loop. I'd like to fit them to the width of the page or at least align the table (not cells' content) to the left. It should be quite an easy task but I found only references related to:

• alignment of cell content (package manual)
• docs built in Rmarkdown (1,2)

I tried the solutions suggested in the references but they did not work. Here what I'm using (commented rows to show other attempts):

  tbl.params = flextable(fdata) %>%
    delete_part(part = "header") %>%
    #autofit() %>%
    border_remove() %>%
    border_inner_h(part="body", border = small_border ) %>%
    hline_top( border = big_border, part="body") %>%
    bold(j=1) %>%
    set_table_properties(layout = "autofit")
    #fit_to_width(7.5)

Am I making a mistake or missing something? I'm looking for solutions in "pure" Officer (if available).

Answer 1

The following script add a flextable in a docx document. The column withs are adjusted by Word and the table is left aligned:

library(officer)
library(flextable)

ftab <- flextable( head( mtcars ) )
ftab <- set_table_properties(ftab, layout = "autofit")
doc <- read_docx()
doc <- body_add_flextable(doc, value = ftab, align = "left")
print(doc, target = "fileout.docx")