R How to Fix: Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large (3 Examples)

In this tutorial, I’ll explain how to handle the error message “Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large” in the R programming language.

The tutorial will contain this:

Here’s how to do it!

Example 1: Increasing Plot Window in RStudio

First, let’s reproduce the error message “Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large” in R. Let’s assume that we want to draw the following plot:

plot(1:10)                      # Trying to create plot in RStudio

Then it might happen that the following error message appears in the RStudio console:

A very common solution for the error message “Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large” is to increase the plotting panel in RStudio. Let’s do this and then we are running the same plot() function code again:

plot(1:10)                      # Creating plot in RStudio

The error is not occurring anymore. Nice!

However, to increase the plot window in RStudio is not always solving the error message “Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large”. For that reason, I’ll show to other possible fixes in the following examples…

Example 2: Shutting Down Current Plotting Device

It might happen that we have specified some R options for a previous plot that are now causing the error message for our new plot. The following R syntax illustrates how to reset the plotting options for our new plot using the dev.off() function:

dev.off()                       # Shut down current plotting device

After running the dev.off function, the error might be solved.

Example 3: Decreasing Plot Area Margins

Another possible reason for the error message “Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large” are too large area margins around our plot. You can decrease those area margins using the par function and the mar argument:

par(mar = c(1, 1, 1, 1))        # Changing area margins

Try to run the plotting code again. Eventually it works now!

The previously shown fixes do usually solve the error message “Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large”. However, in case you still have problems you may have a look at this thread on Stack Overflow.

Note that the previous examples have illustrated some error solutions based on a scatterplot. However, we can apply the same R syntax to other types of plots such as boxplots, barcharts, histograms, density plots, and so on…

Video, Further Resources & Summary

Do you need more explanations on the R code of this tutorial? Then I can recommend to watch the following video of my YouTube channel. In the video, I show the R syntax of this tutorial.

Furthermore, you might want to read some of the other tutorials on this website. You can find some related tutorials about error messages in R below:

• Drawing Plots in R
• All R Programming Examples

In summary: In this tutorial you learned how to fix the issue “Error in plot.new() : figure margins too large” in the R programming language. Let me know in the comments section below, if you have further comments or questions.