pandoc version 1.12.3 or higher is required and was not found (R shiny)

Question

I have a problem generating a pdf report from my app shiny which is hosted on a server.

the app works fine but when I press the button to download the report, I get

Answer 1

Go into RStudio and find the system environment variable for RSTUDIO_PANDOC

Sys.getenv("RSTUDIO_PANDOC")

Then put that in your R script prior to calling the render command.

Sys.setenv(RSTUDIO_PANDOC="--- insert directory here ---")

This worked for me after I'd been struggling to find how rmarkdown finds pandoc. I had to check github to look at the source.