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You can use the following basic syntax to save multiple plots to a PDF in R:
#specify path to save PDF to destination = 'C:\Users\Bob\Documents\my_plots.pdf' #open PDF pdf(file=destination) #specify to save plots in 2x2 grid par(mfrow = c(2,2)) #save plots to PDF for (i in 1:4) { x=rnorm(i) y=rnorm(i) plot(x, y) } #turn off PDF plotting dev.off()
The following examples show how to use this syntax in practice.
Example 1: Save Multiple Plots to Same Page in PDF
The following code shows how to save several plots to the same page in a PDF:
#specify path to save PDF to destination = 'C:\Users\Bob\Documents\my_plots.pdf' #open PDF pdf(file=destination) #specify to save plots in 2x2 grid par(mfrow = c(2,2)) #save plots to PDF for (i in 1:4) { x=rnorm(i) y=rnorm(i) plot(x, y) } #turn off PDF plotting dev.off()
Once I navigate to the PDF in the specified location on my computer, I find the following one-page PDF with four plots on it:
Example 2: Save Multiple Plots to Different Pages in PDF
To save multiple plots to different pages in a PDF, I can simply remove the par() function:
#specify path to save PDF to destination = 'C:\Users\Bob\Documents\my_plots.pdf' #open PDF pdf(file=destination) #save plots to PDF for (i in 1:4) { x=rnorm(i) y=rnorm(i) plot(x, y) } #turn off PDF plotting dev.off()
Once I navigate to the PDF in the specified location on my computer, I find the a four-page PDF with one plot on each page.
Additional Resources
How to Use the par() Function in R
How to Overlay Plots in R