[R] Error: pandoc version 1.12.3 or higher is required and was not found

[Yihui Xie]

I guess the confusion here is the relationship between knitr::pandoc()
and rmarkdown::render(). The error message you saw was from
rmarkdown::render(), which requires Pandoc 1.12.3. The easiest way to
go to use rmarkdown (I mean the R package rmarkdown) is to use
RStudio, and you don't even need to install Pandoc separately. There
are a number of possible reasons for the failure you saw: 1) You
didn't install Pandoc; 2) You installed but didn't put it on PATH; 3)
You installed a lower version of Pandoc. I don't mean you should not
figure out the exact reason, but it just saves so much time not having
to take care of such technical details by yourself.

knitr::pandoc() is almost a completely different story. If you are
familiar with Pandoc command-line arguments, please feel free to use
it. If you don't want to waste time on remembering those arguments, go
for rmarkdown::render() instead, which has a much better interface to
Pandoc than knitr::pandoc(). As the author of knitr::pandoc(), I can
tell you this function was about two afternoon's work, and rmarkdown
has been under active development for almost two years now. Hopefully
that makes it clear enough for you to choose between knitr::pandoc()
and rmarkdown::render() :-)

Regards,
Yihui
--
Yihui Xie <xieyihui at gmail.com>
Web: http://yihui.name


On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 6:13 AM, Ryszard Czermiński
<ryszard at czerminski.net> wrote:
> I am trying to use R Markdown, but call to render() gives me an error:
> Error: pandoc version 1.12.3 or higher is required and was not found.
>
> As I understand [http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/pandoc/] pandoc is a function
> defined in knitr, which I have installed and it has pandoc() function
> defined.
>
> Looks like some version incompatibility issue, but I do not really know how
> to resolve it.
> Do I need to go to older R version to use it?
>
> I would appreciate your help.
>
> Best regards,
> Ryszard
>
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 3.2.2 (2015-08-14)
> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
> Running under: OS X 10.10.3 (Yosemite)
> other attached packages: knitr_1.11
> [...]
>
> Ryszard Czerminski
> 508-358-6328
> ryszard at czerminski.net
> LinkedIn.com/in/Ryszard.Czerminski