diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 0e9f6887..b9c5c747 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: officer
 Type: Package
 Title: Manipulation of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint Documents
-Version: 0.3.15.006
+Version: 0.3.15.007
 Authors@R: c(
     person("David", "Gohel", role = c("aut", "cre"),
     email = "david.gohel@ardata.fr"),
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 4bc62a27..b0266bc5 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -8,6 +8,8 @@
 ## Issues
 
 * fix #333: issue with &, <, > in `to_wml.block_table`.
+* fix https://github.com/davidgohel/officedown/issues/41: when a space was in the path, pandoc send the short path format
+instead of the real path name, it needed to be transformed with `normalizePath`.
 
 ## Change
 
diff --git a/R/knitr_utils.R b/R/knitr_utils.R
index 1cb7f689..d3607572 100644
--- a/R/knitr_utils.R
+++ b/R/knitr_utils.R
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ get_reference_value <- function(format = NULL) {
   } else {
     reference_data <- get_default_pandoc_data_file(format = format)
   }
-  return(reference_data)
+  return(normalizePath(reference_data, winslash = "/"))
 }