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highlight() changes the text highlight color of a selection of cells in a flextable. This sets the background color of the text characters themselves (not the cell background). You can supply a fixed color string or a function that derives colors from column values.

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Function signature

highlight(x, i = NULL, j = NULL, color = "yellow", part = "body", source = j)

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Parameters

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x
flextable
required
A flextable object.
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i
integer | formula | logical
Row selector. Accepts integer indices, a one-sided formula (e.g., ~ col > 5), or a logical vector. NULL selects all rows in the specified part.
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j
integer | character | formula
Column selector. Accepts integer indices, column names, a formula, or a logical vector. NULL selects all columns.
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color
string | function
default:"yellow"
A CSS-compatible color string (e.g., "yellow", "#FFFF00") or a function that accepts a vector of data values and returns a character vector of color strings.
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part
string
default:"body"
Which part of the table to target: "body", "header", "footer", or "all".
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source
integer | character | formula
default:"j"
When color is a function, source specifies which dataset column(s) are passed as input to the function. This allows highlighting cells in j based on values from a different (possibly hidden) column. Defaults to j.

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Return value

The modified flextable object.

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Examples

Highlight cells where a condition is met: 
ft <- flextable(head(mtcars, n = 10))
ft <- highlight(ft, j = "disp", i = ~ disp > 200, color = "yellow")
ft
Apply a color scale based on quantiles: 
my_color_fun <- function(x) {
  out <- rep("yellow", length(x))
  out[x < quantile(x, .75)] <- "pink"
  out[x < quantile(x, .50)] <- "wheat"
  out[x < quantile(x, .25)] <- "gray90"
  out
}
ft <- flextable(head(mtcars, n = 10))
ft <- highlight(ft, j = ~ drat + wt + qsec, color = my_color_fun)
ft

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See also

  • color() — set text foreground color
  • bg() — set cell background color
  • style() — apply multiple formatting properties at once

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