How to format kable table when knit from .rmd to Word (with bookdown)

Pandoc version ≥2

Yes, this can be done with Pandoc (see David's answer)

Original answer follows:

Pandoc version <2

The conversion to word is made via pandoc. Currently pandoc only creates four type of tables,

• simple tables
• multiline_tables
• grid_tables
• pipe_tables

Some of those supported formats are demontrated in pander and in the pandoc manual p 35-39.

So you cannot create the stripped table currently with pandoc.

You also have a good summary of how you can use tables in rmarkdown.rstudio.

This was not possible but since pandoc V2 is out, you can do it with package flextable (>= 0.4.0)(and pandoc V2). Below the code you should add into a code chunk:

library(magrittr)
library(flextable)

tab_1_curr <- structure(list(myRegion = c("a", "b", "c", "BRITISH COLUMBIA"
 ), Current_Perc_1 = c(85.9, 90.8, 89.7, 88.4), Current_Perc_2 = c(88, 
 91, 89, 89.3), curr_change_1_to_2 = c(2.09999999999999, 0.200000000000003, 
 -0.700000000000003, 0.9)), .Names = c("myRegion", "Current_Perc_1", 
 "Current_Perc_2", "curr_change_1_to_2"), row.names = c(NA, 4L
 ), class = "data.frame")


regulartable(tab_1_curr) %>% 
  bold(i = ~ myRegion %in% "BRITISH COLUMBIA") %>% 
  theme_zebra() %>% 
  autofit()

The huxtable package is available. It includes similar table customization tools as kableExtra. huxtable is designed to output to LaTeX/PDF and HTML (similar to kableExtra). However, huxtable also includes a as_flextable function to convert a huxtable object to a flextable object, which can be output to Word (as noted by David above). After a lot of searching, it seems to me like huxtable is the only available package that can easily output to all of Word, HTML, and PDF with a single package.