Introduction to Quarto

Published

January 13, 2023

Install Quarto

  1. Head over to https://quarto.org/ and click on the big, blue “Get Started” button. Then follow the instructions to install Quarto.
  2. Open RStudio. (Note if RStudio was open when you installed Quarto, quit and re-open it.)

At this point in RStudio, if you go to File > New File... you should see options to choose Quarto Document and Quarto Presentation.


Help and Tutorials

There are several guides and tutorials available on the Quarto website. These include:

  • Creating basic content (e.g., figures, tables, diagrams, footnotes, citations)
  • Including computation/syntax
  • Generating output in different formats (e.g., HTML, PDF, MS Word)
  • Creating slides and presentations (These notes are a Quarto presentation!)
  • Building websites
  • Building books
  • Creating interactive dashboards


Create Your First Quarto Document

Click the Tutorial: Hello Quarto link on the left-side of the “Getting Started” page. Make sure that the RStudio tool is selected at the top of the tutorial.


Work through this tutorial. This will introduce you to some of the basic concepts of creating and rendering a Quarto document.


Learning How to Integrate R Code

Also work through the Tutorial: Computations. Again, before starting, ensure that the RStudio tool is selected at the top of the tutorial.


Learn More

Check out the Welcome to Quarto Workshop. This is a 2 1/2 hour workshop introducing people to Quarto.

If you are familiar with RMarkdown and want to learn how to switch over to Quarto, here is a nice 30 minute talk by Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel that helps you do that.