Pandoc error with word output and template

[cderv]

This is also a problem for me (on a Mac)

This is interesting that you have that on Mac too!
Can you share the pandoc command line that should be shown when rendering the doc ?

Sorry, I hope I've posted in the right place...I'm not sure I have! I am trying to knit my bookdown to word, and it fails each time.

The error message:

pandoc: template.docx: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)
Error: pandoc document conversion failed with error 1

R version:

$platform
[1] "x86_64-apple-darwin17.0"

$arch
[1] "x86_64"

$os
[1] "darwin17.0"

$system
[1] "x86_64, darwin17.0"

$status
[1] ""

$major
[1] "4"

$minor
[1] "0.3"

$year
[1] "2020"

$month
[1] "10"

$day
[1] "10"

$`svn rev`
[1] "79318"

$language
[1] "R"

$version.string
[1] "R version 4.0.3 (2020-10-10)"

$nickname
[1] "Bunny-Wunnies Freak Out"

Mac is OS Catalina, 10.15.7

Thank you for your patience

Originally posted by @GabriellaS-K in rstudio/rmarkdown#701 (comment)

[cderv]

Hi @GabriellaS-K,

can you share more about the information in your YAML about the output format ?
Are you trying to use a template docx ?

Also can you share what is before the Pandoc error, the whole command line (usually it is in the rmarkdown pane in the IDE).

Thank you !

[GabriellaS-K]

Hi,

Thank you so much! I'm trying to knit my bookdown files (which are kept on one drive) to a word document, using a word template (I followed Yihui Xie's wonderfully helpful Vimeo).

Below is the YAML for my index script:

#####################
## metadata ##
#####################
title: "xyzzy"
#####################
## Output ##
#####################

site: bookdown::bookdown_site
documentclass: book
output: 
 bookdown::gitbook: default
# bookdown::html_book:
 # toc: true
 # toc_depth: 3
 # toc_float: true
 # theme: "cerulean"
 # highlight: tango
 # code_folding: hide


 #bookdown::pdf_book:
 # toc: TRUE
 # number_sections: TRUE
#  template: null
#  includes:
#   in_header: _tex/preamble.tex
#   before_body: _tex/doc_preface.tex 
   
 word_document:
   reference_docx: "template.docx"
#   fig_caption: yes
#   md_extensions: +footnotes
#   toc: yes #un # these when want to do word


link-citations: yes
bibliography: GK_references.bib
csl: african-online-scientific-information-systems-harvard.csl
#biblio-style: african-online-scientific-information-systems-harvard.csl

#always_allow_html: yes #unhashtag for pdf
#classoption: oneside #unhashtag for pdf

In the 'build' pane, this is the full error message:

/Applications/RStudio.app/Contents/MacOS/pandoc/pandoc +RTS -K512m -RTS _main.utf8.md --to docx --from markdown+autolink_bare_uris+tex_math_single_backslash --output _main.docx --lua-filter /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.0/Resources/library/rmarkdown/rmarkdown/lua/pagebreak.lua --highlight-style tango --reference-doc template.docx --citeproc 
output file: _main.knit.md
[WARNING] Citeproc: citation wickham2019a not found
pandoc: template.docx: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)
Error: pandoc document conversion failed with error 1
In addition: There were 40 warnings (use warnings() to see them)
Please delete _main.Rmd after you finish debugging the error.
Execution halted

Exited with status 1.

Thank you again for your patience

[cderv]

Sorry for the delay.
Where is located template.docx relative to your project ? It is currently not found by Pandoc when trying to build to work.
Is it in the root of your bookdown project ?

[GabriellaS-K]

Hi! My turn to apologise for the delay! The template.docx is in the same folder as the index and other chapters, not even in a subfolder!

[GabriellaS-K]

Funny enough, it works if the whole folder is on my desktop. But I work with a team, using one drive, and that's where it stops working. The contents of the folder is exactly the same, but if its on a local computer it works, if not-it doesn't. Its not a long term solution to keep downloading the folder and do it that way...

[cderv]

Interesting. So this is a matter of network drive. We already have some issue in the past with this and Pandoc. The first issue you put this too could have been the right one.

Can you try also the same but without bookdown ? Using rmarkdown and word_document() with a template.
Should be the same issue right ?

Next test would be with pandoc only.

• Write a simple test.md file

# This is a test file

With a paragraph

• If you have Pandoc in the terminal, you can then use this commandline from the working directory

pandoc -t docx -o test.docx --reference-doc=template.docx test.md

Or using R:

rmarkdown::pandoc_convert(
  "test.md", "docx", output = "test.docx", 
  options = c("--reference-doc", "template.docx"))
)

Does it works ?

[GabriellaS-K]

Weirdly, this has fixed itself?? I'm now building the book from one drive, and it knits to word! Maybe a bug that sorted itself out?

Sorry for the slow responses, appreciate your time on this!

[cderv]

That is great and it is really good news !

No worries on the time spent - if you encounter a new error, please reach out.

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