The Org Manual

Short Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Org Mode Manual

This manual is for Org version 9.1.14 (release_9.1.14).

Copyright © 2004–2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual,” and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”

(a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual.”

 — The Detailed Node Listing —

Introduction

Document structure

Visibility cycling

Tables

The spreadsheet

Hyperlinks

Internal links

TODO items

Extended use of TODO keywords

Progress logging

Tags

Properties and columns

Column view

Defining columns

Dates and times

Creating timestamps

Deadlines and scheduling

Clocking work time

Capture - Refile - Archive

Capture

Capture templates

Protocols for external access

Archiving

Agenda views

The built-in agenda views

Presentation and sorting

Custom agenda views

Markup for rich export

Embedded LaTeX

Exporting

Beamer export

HTML export

LaTeX export

OpenDocument Text export

Math formatting in ODT export

Advanced topics in ODT export

Texinfo export

Publishing

Configuration

Sample configuration

Working with source code

Header arguments

Using header arguments

Specific header arguments

Miscellaneous

Interaction with other packages

Hacking

Tables and lists in arbitrary syntax

MobileOrg

1 Introduction

1.1 Summary

Org is a mode for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, and project planning with a fast and effective plain-text system. It also is an authoring system with unique support for literate programming and reproducible research.

Org is implemented on top of Outline mode, which makes it possible to keep the content of large files well structured. Visibility cycling and structure editing help to work with the tree. Tables are easily created with a built-in table editor. Plain text URL-like links connect to websites, emails, Usenet messages, BBDB entries, and any files related to the projects.

Org develops organizational tasks around notes files that contain lists or information about projects as plain text. Project planning and task management makes use of metadata which is part of an outline node. Based on this data, specific entries can be extracted in queries and create dynamic agenda views that also integrate the Emacs calendar and diary. Org can be used to implement many different project planning schemes, such as David Allen’s GTD system.

Org files can serve as a single source authoring system with export to many different formats such as HTML, LaTeX, Open Document, and Markdown. New export backends can be derived from existing ones, or defined from scratch.

Org files can include source code blocks, which makes Org uniquely suited for authoring technical documents with code examples. Org source code blocks are fully functional; they can be evaluated in place and their results can be captured in the file. This makes it possible to create a single file reproducible research compendium.

Org keeps simple things simple. When first fired up, it should feel like a straightforward, easy to use outliner. Complexity is not imposed, but a large amount of functionality is available when needed. Org is a toolbox. Many users actually run only a (very personal) fraction of Org’s capabilities, and know that there is more whenever they need it.

All of this is achieved with strictly plain text files, the most portable and future-proof file format. Org runs in Emacs. Emacs is one of the most widely ported programs, so that Org mode is available on every major platform.

There is a website for Org which provides links to the newest version of Org, as well as additional information, frequently asked questions (FAQ), links to tutorials, etc. This page is located at https://orgmode.org.

An earlier version (7.3) of this manual is available as a paperback book from Network Theory Ltd.

1.2 Installation

Org is part of recent distributions of GNU Emacs, so you normally don’t need to install it. If, for one reason or another, you want to install Org on top of this pre-packaged version, there are three ways to do it:

• By using Emacs package system.
• By downloading Org as an archive.
• By using Org’s git repository.

We strongly recommend to stick to a single installation method.

Using Emacs packaging system

Recent Emacs distributions include a packaging system which lets you install Elisp libraries. You can install Org with M-x package-install RET org.

Important: you need to do this in a session where no .org file has been visited, i.e., where no Org built-in function have been loaded. Otherwise autoload Org functions will mess up the installation.

Then, to make sure your Org configuration is taken into account, initialize the package system with (package-initialize) in your Emacs init file before setting any Org option. If you want to use Org’s package repository, check out the Org ELPA page.

Downloading Org as an archive

You can download Org latest release from Org’s website. In this case, make sure you set the load-path correctly in your Emacs init file:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/path/to/orgdir/lisp")

The downloaded archive contains contributed libraries that are not included in Emacs. If you want to use them, add the contrib directory to your load-path:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/path/to/orgdir/contrib/lisp" t)

Optionally, you can compile the files and/or install them in your system. Run make help to list compilation and installation options.

Using Org’s git repository

You can clone Org’s repository and install Org like this:

$ cd ~/src/
$ git clone https://code.orgmode.org/bzg/org-mode.git
$ cd org-mode/
$ make autoloads

Note that in this case, make autoloads is mandatory: it defines Org’s version in org-version.el and Org’s autoloads in org-loaddefs.el.

Remember to add the correct load-path as described in the method above.

You can also compile with make, generate the documentation with make doc, create a local configuration with make config and install Org with make install. Please run make help to get the list of compilation/installation options.

For more detailed explanations on Org’s build system, please check the Org Build System page on Worg.

1.3 Activation

Org mode buffers need font-lock to be turned on: this is the default in Emacs¹.

There are compatibility issues between Org mode and some other Elisp packages, please take the time to check the list (see Conflicts).

The four Org commands org-store-link, org-capture, org-agenda, and org-switchb should be accessible through global keys (i.e., anywhere in Emacs, not just in Org buffers). Here are suggested bindings for these keys, please modify the keys to your own liking.

(global-set-key "\C-cl" 'org-store-link)
(global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
(global-set-key "\C-cc" 'org-capture)
(global-set-key "\C-cb" 'org-switchb)

Files with the .org extension use Org mode by default. To turn on Org mode in a file that does not have the extension .org, make the first line of a file look like this:

MY PROJECTS    -*- mode: org; -*-

which will select Org mode for this buffer no matter what the file’s name is. See also the variable org-insert-mode-line-in-empty-file.

Many commands in Org work on the region if the region is active. To make use of this, you need to have transient-mark-mode turned on, which is the default. If you do not like transient-mark-mode, you can create an active region by using the mouse to select a region, or pressing C-SPC twice before moving the cursor.

1.4 Feedback

If you find problems with Org, or if you have questions, remarks, or ideas about it, please mail to the Org mailing list emacs-orgmode@gnu.org. You can subscribe to the list on this web page. If you are not a member of the mailing list, your mail will be passed to the list after a moderator has approved it².

For bug reports, please first try to reproduce the bug with the latest version of Org available—if you are running an outdated version, it is quite possible that the bug has been fixed already. If the bug persists, prepare a report and provide as much information as possible, including the version information of Emacs (M-x emacs-version RET) and Org (M-x org-version RET), as well as the Org related setup in the Emacs init file. The easiest way to do this is to use the command

M-x org-submit-bug-report RET

which will put all this information into an Emacs mail buffer so that you only need to add your description. If you are not sending the Email from within Emacs, please copy and paste the content into your Email program.

Sometimes you might face a problem due to an error in your Emacs or Org mode setup. Before reporting a bug, it is very helpful to start Emacs with minimal customizations and reproduce the problem. Doing so often helps you determine if the problem is with your customization or with Org mode itself. You can start a typical minimal session with a command like the example below.

$ emacs -Q -l /path/to/minimal-org.el

However if you are using Org mode as distributed with Emacs, a minimal setup is not necessary. In that case it is sufficient to start Emacs as emacs -Q. The minimal-org.el setup file can have contents as shown below.

;;; Minimal setup to load latest 'org-mode'

;; activate debugging
(setq debug-on-error t
      debug-on-signal nil
      debug-on-quit nil)

;; add latest org-mode to load path
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/org-mode/lisp")
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/org-mode/contrib/lisp" t)

If an error occurs, a backtrace can be very useful (see below on how to create one). Often a small example file helps, along with clear information about:

1. What exactly did you do?
2. What did you expect to happen?
3. What happened instead?

Thank you for helping to improve this program.

How to create a useful backtrace

If working with Org produces an error with a message you don’t understand, you may have hit a bug. The best way to report this is by providing, in addition to what was mentioned above, a backtrace. This is information from the built-in debugger about where and how the error occurred. Here is how to produce a useful backtrace:

1. Reload uncompiled versions of all Org mode Lisp files. The backtrace contains much more information if it is produced with uncompiled code. To do this, use

   C-u M-x org-reload RET
   

   or select Org -> Refresh/Reload -> Reload Org uncompiled from the menu.

2. Go to the Options menu and select Enter Debugger on Error.
3. Do whatever you have to do to hit the error. Don’t forget to document the steps you take.
4. When you hit the error, a *Backtrace* buffer will appear on the screen. Save this buffer to a file (for example using C-x C-w) and attach it to your bug report.

1.5 Typesetting conventions used in this manual

TODO keywords, tags, properties, etc.

Org mainly uses three types of keywords: TODO keywords, tags and property names. In this manual we use the following conventions:

TODO

WAITING

TODO keywords are written with all capitals, even if they are user-defined.

boss

ARCHIVE

User-defined tags are written in lowercase; built-in tags with special meaning are written with all capitals.

Release

PRIORITY

User-defined properties are capitalized; built-in properties with special meaning are written with all capitals.

Moreover, Org uses option keywords (like #+TITLE to set the title) and environment keywords (like #+BEGIN_EXPORT html to start a HTML environment). They are written in uppercase in the manual to enhance its readability, but you can use lowercase in your Org file.

Key bindings and commands

The manual suggests a few global key bindings, in particular C-c a for org-agenda and C-c c for org-capture. These are only suggestions, but the rest of the manual assumes that these key bindings are in place in order to list commands by key access.

Also, the manual lists both the keys and the corresponding commands for accessing a functionality. Org mode often uses the same key for different functions, depending on context. The command that is bound to such keys has a generic name, like org-metaright. In the manual we will, wherever possible, give the function that is internally called by the generic command. For example, in the chapter on document structure, M-RIGHT will be listed to call org-do-demote, while in the chapter on tables, it will be listed to call org-table-move-column-right. If you prefer, you can compile the manual without the command names by unsetting the flag cmdnames in org.texi.

2 Document structure

Org is based on Outline mode and provides flexible commands to edit the structure of the document.

2.1 Outlines

Org is implemented on top of Outline mode. Outlines allow a document to be organized in a hierarchical structure, which (at least for me) is the best representation of notes and thoughts. An overview of this structure is achieved by folding (hiding) large parts of the document to show only the general document structure and the parts currently being worked on. Org greatly simplifies the use of outlines by compressing the entire show/hide functionality into a single command, org-cycle, which is bound to the TAB key.

2.2 Headlines

Headlines define the structure of an outline tree. The headlines in Org start with one or more stars, on the left margin^{3 4}. For example:

* Top level headline
** Second level
*** 3rd level
    some text
*** 3rd level
    more text

* Another top level headline

Note that a headline named after org-footnote-section, which defaults to ‘Footnotes’, is considered as special. A subtree with this headline will be silently ignored by exporting functions.

Some people find the many stars too noisy and would prefer an outline that has whitespace followed by a single star as headline starters. Clean view, describes a setup to realize this.

An empty line after the end of a subtree is considered part of it and will be hidden when the subtree is folded. However, if you leave at least two empty lines, one empty line will remain visible after folding the subtree, in order to structure the collapsed view. See the variable org-cycle-separator-lines to modify this behavior.

2.3 Visibility cycling

2.3.1 Global and local cycling

Outlines make it possible to hide parts of the text in the buffer. Org uses just two commands, bound to TAB and S-TAB to change the visibility in the buffer.

TAB     (org-cycle)

Subtree cycling: Rotate current subtree among the states

,-> FOLDED -> CHILDREN -> SUBTREE --.
'-----------------------------------'

The cursor must be on a headline for this to work⁵.

S-TAB     (org-global-cycle)

C-u TAB

Global cycling: Rotate the entire buffer among the states

,-> OVERVIEW -> CONTENTS -> SHOW ALL --.
'--------------------------------------'

When S-TAB is called with a numeric prefix argument N, the CONTENTS view up to headlines of level N will be shown. Note that inside tables, S-TAB jumps to the previous field.

You can run global cycling using TAB only if point is at the very beginning of the buffer, but not on a headline, and org-cycle-global-at-bob is set to a non-nil value.

C-u C-u TAB     (org-set-startup-visibility)

Switch back to the startup visibility of the buffer (see Initial visibility).

C-u C-u C-u TAB     (outline-show-all)

Show all, including drawers.

C-c C-r     (org-reveal)

Reveal context around point, showing the current entry, the following heading and the hierarchy above. Useful for working near a location that has been exposed by a sparse tree command (see Sparse trees) or an agenda command (see Agenda commands). With a prefix argument show, on each level, all sibling headings. With a double prefix argument, also show the entire subtree of the parent.

C-c C-k     (outline-show-branches)

Expose all the headings of the subtree, CONTENTS view for just one subtree.

C-c TAB     (outline-show-children)

Expose all direct children of the subtree. With a numeric prefix argument N, expose all children down to level N.

C-c C-x b     (org-tree-to-indirect-buffer)

Show the current subtree in an indirect buffer⁶. With a numeric prefix argument N, go up to level N and then take that tree. If N is negative then go up that many levels. With a C-u prefix, do not remove the previously used indirect buffer.

C-c C-x v     (org-copy-visible)

Copy the visible text in the region into the kill ring.

2.3.2 Initial visibility

When Emacs first visits an Org file, the global state is set to OVERVIEW, i.e., only the top level headlines are visible⁷. This can be configured through the variable org-startup-folded, or on a per-file basis by adding one of the following lines anywhere in the buffer:

#+STARTUP: overview
#+STARTUP: content
#+STARTUP: showall
#+STARTUP: showeverything

Furthermore, any entries with a VISIBILITY property (see Properties and columns) will get their visibility adapted accordingly. Allowed values for this property are folded, children, content, and all.

C-u C-u TAB     (org-set-startup-visibility)

Switch back to the startup visibility of the buffer, i.e., whatever is requested by startup options and VISIBILITY properties in individual entries.

2.3.3 Catching invisible edits

Sometimes you may inadvertently edit an invisible part of the buffer and be confused on what has been edited and how to undo the mistake. Setting org-catch-invisible-edits to non-nil will help prevent this. See the docstring of this option on how Org should catch invisible edits and process them.

2.4 Motion

The following commands jump to other headlines in the buffer.

C-c C-n     (org-next-visible-heading)

Next heading.

C-c C-p     (org-previous-visible-heading)

Previous heading.

C-c C-f     (org-forward-same-level)

Next heading same level.

C-c C-b     (org-backward-same-level)

Previous heading same level.

C-c C-u     (outline-up-heading)

Backward to higher level heading.

C-c C-j     (org-goto)

Jump to a different place without changing the current outline visibility. Shows the document structure in a temporary buffer, where you can use the following keys to find your destination:

TAB         Cycle visibility.
DOWN / UP   Next/previous visible headline.
RET         Select this location.
/           Do a Sparse-tree search
The following keys work if you turn off org-goto-auto-isearch
n / p        Next/previous visible headline.
f / b        Next/previous headline same level.
u            One level up.
0-9          Digit argument.
q            Quit

See also the option org-goto-interface.

2.5 Structure editing

M-RET     (org-meta-return)

Insert a new heading, item or row.

If the command is used at the beginning of a line, and if there is a heading or a plain list item (see Plain lists) at point, the new heading/item is created before the current line. When used at the beginning of a regular line of text, turn that line into a heading.

When this command is used in the middle of a line, the line is split and the rest of the line becomes the new item or headline. If you do not want the line to be split, customize org-M-RET-may-split-line.

Calling the command with a C-u prefix unconditionally inserts a new heading at the end of the current subtree, thus preserving its contents. With a double C-u C-u prefix, the new heading is created at the end of the parent subtree instead.

C-RET     (org-insert-heading-respect-content)

Insert a new heading at the end of the current subtree.

M-S-RET     (org-insert-todo-heading)

Insert new TODO entry with same level as current heading. See also the variable org-treat-insert-todo-heading-as-state-change.

C-S-RET     (org-insert-todo-heading-respect-content)

Insert new TODO entry with same level as current heading. Like C-RET, the new headline will be inserted after the current subtree.

TAB     (org-cycle)

In a new entry with no text yet, the first TAB demotes the entry to become a child of the previous one. The next TAB makes it a parent, and so on, all the way to top level. Yet another TAB, and you are back to the initial level.

M-LEFT     (org-do-promote)

Promote current heading by one level.

M-RIGHT     (org-do-demote)

Demote current heading by one level.

M-S-LEFT     (org-promote-subtree)

Promote the current subtree by one level.

M-S-RIGHT     (org-demote-subtree)

Demote the current subtree by one level.

M-UP     (org-move-subtree-up)

Move subtree up (swap with previous subtree of same level).

M-DOWN     (org-move-subtree-down)

Move subtree down (swap with next subtree of same level).

M-h     (org-mark-element)

Mark the element at point. Hitting repeatedly will mark subsequent elements of the one just marked. E.g., hitting M-h on a paragraph will mark it, hitting M-h immediately again will mark the next one.

C-c @     (org-mark-subtree)

Mark the subtree at point. Hitting repeatedly will mark subsequent subtrees of the same level than the marked subtree.

C-c C-x C-w     (org-cut-subtree)

Kill subtree, i.e., remove it from buffer but save in kill ring. With a numeric prefix argument N, kill N sequential subtrees.

C-c C-x M-w     (org-copy-subtree)

Copy subtree to kill ring. With a numeric prefix argument N, copy the N sequential subtrees.

C-c C-x C-y     (org-paste-subtree)

Yank subtree from kill ring. This does modify the level of the subtree to make sure the tree fits in nicely at the yank position. The yank level can also be specified with a numeric prefix argument, or by yanking after a headline marker like ‘****’.

C-y     (org-yank)

Depending on the options org-yank-adjusted-subtrees and org-yank-folded-subtrees, Org’s internal yank command will paste subtrees folded and in a clever way, using the same command as C-c C-x C-y. With the default settings, no level adjustment will take place, but the yanked tree will be folded unless doing so would swallow text previously visible. Any prefix argument to this command will force a normal yank to be executed, with the prefix passed along. A good way to force a normal yank is C-u C-y. If you use yank-pop after a yank, it will yank previous kill items plainly, without adjustment and folding.

C-c C-x c     (org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift)

Clone a subtree by making a number of sibling copies of it. You will be prompted for the number of copies to make, and you can also specify if any timestamps in the entry should be shifted. This can be useful, for example, to create a number of tasks related to a series of lectures to prepare. For more details, see the docstring of the command org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift.

C-c C-w     (org-refile)

Refile entry or region to a different location. See Refile and copy.

C-c ^     (org-sort)

Sort same-level entries. When there is an active region, all entries in the region will be sorted. Otherwise the children of the current headline are sorted. The command prompts for the sorting method, which can be alphabetically, numerically, by time (first timestamp with active preferred, creation time, scheduled time, deadline time), by priority, by TODO keyword (in the sequence the keywords have been defined in the setup) or by the value of a property. Reverse sorting is possible as well. You can also supply your own function to extract the sorting key. With a C-u prefix, sorting will be case-sensitive.

C-x n s     (org-narrow-to-subtree)

Narrow buffer to current subtree.

C-x n b     (org-narrow-to-block)

Narrow buffer to current block.

C-x n w     (widen)

Widen buffer to remove narrowing.

C-c *     (org-toggle-heading)

Turn a normal line or plain list item into a headline (so that it becomes a subheading at its location). Also turn a headline into a normal line by removing the stars. If there is an active region, turn all lines in the region into headlines. If the first line in the region was an item, turn only the item lines into headlines. Finally, if the first line is a headline, remove the stars from all headlines in the region.

When there is an active region (Transient Mark mode), promotion and demotion work on all headlines in the region. To select a region of headlines, it is best to place both point and mark at the beginning of a line, mark at the beginning of the first headline, and point at the line just after the last headline to change. Note that when the cursor is inside a table (see Tables), the Meta-Cursor keys have different functionality.

2.6 Sparse trees

An important feature of Org mode is the ability to construct sparse trees for selected information in an outline tree, so that the entire document is folded as much as possible, but the selected information is made visible along with the headline structure above it⁸. Just try it out and you will see immediately how it works.

Org mode contains several commands for creating such trees, all these commands can be accessed through a dispatcher:

C-c /     (org-sparse-tree)

This prompts for an extra key to select a sparse-tree creating command.

C-c / r  or  C-c / /     (org-occur)

Prompts for a regexp and shows a sparse tree with all matches. If the match is in a headline, the headline is made visible. If the match is in the body of an entry, headline and body are made visible. In order to provide minimal context, also the full hierarchy of headlines above the match is shown, as well as the headline following the match. Each match is also highlighted; the highlights disappear when the buffer is changed by an editing command⁹, or by pressing C-c C-c. When called with a C-u prefix argument, previous highlights are kept, so several calls to this command can be stacked.

M-g n  or  M-g M-n     (next-error)

Jump to the next sparse tree match in this buffer.

M-g p  or  M-g M-p     (previous-error)

Jump to the previous sparse tree match in this buffer.

For frequently used sparse trees of specific search strings, you can use the option org-agenda-custom-commands to define fast keyboard access to specific sparse trees. These commands will then be accessible through the agenda dispatcher (see Agenda dispatcher). For example:

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("f" occur-tree "FIXME")))

will define the key C-c a f as a shortcut for creating a sparse tree matching the string ‘FIXME’.

The other sparse tree commands select headings based on TODO keywords, tags, or properties and will be discussed later in this manual.

To print a sparse tree, you can use the Emacs command ps-print-buffer-with-faces which does not print invisible parts of the document. Or you can use C-c C-e C-v to export only the visible part of the document and print the resulting file.

2.7 Plain lists

Within an entry of the outline tree, hand-formatted lists can provide additional structure. They also provide a way to create lists of checkboxes (see Checkboxes). Org supports editing such lists, and every exporter (see Exporting) can parse and format them.

Org knows ordered lists, unordered lists, and description lists.

• Unordered list items start with ‘-’, ‘+’, or ‘*’¹⁰ as bullets.
• Ordered list items start with a numeral followed by either a period or a right parenthesis¹¹, such as ‘1.’ or ‘1)’¹². If you want a list to start with a different value (e.g., 20), start the text of the item with [@20]¹³. Those constructs can be used in any item of the list in order to enforce a particular numbering.
• Description list items are unordered list items, and contain the separator ‘ :: ’ to distinguish the description term from the description.

Items belonging to the same list must have the same indentation on the first line. In particular, if an ordered list reaches number ‘10.’, then the 2–digit numbers must be written left-aligned with the other numbers in the list. An item ends before the next line that is less or equally indented than its bullet/number.

A list ends whenever every item has ended, which means before any line less or equally indented than items at top level. It also ends before two blank lines. In that case, all items are closed. Here is an example:

** Lord of the Rings
   My favorite scenes are (in this order)
   1. The attack of the Rohirrim
   2. Eowyn's fight with the witch king
      + this was already my favorite scene in the book
      + I really like Miranda Otto.
   3. Peter Jackson being shot by Legolas
      - on DVD only
      He makes a really funny face when it happens.
   But in the end, no individual scenes matter but the film as a whole.
   Important actors in this film are:
   - Elijah Wood :: He plays Frodo
   - Sean Astin :: He plays Sam, Frodo's friend.  I still remember
     him very well from his role as Mikey Walsh in The Goonies.

Org supports these lists by tuning filling and wrapping commands to deal with them correctly, and by exporting them properly (see Exporting). Since indentation is what governs the structure of these lists, many structural constructs like #+BEGIN_... blocks can be indented to signal that they belong to a particular item.

If you find that using a different bullet for a sub-list (than that used for the current list-level) improves readability, customize the variable org-list-demote-modify-bullet. To get a greater difference of indentation between items and their sub-items, customize org-list-indent-offset.

The following commands act on items when the cursor is in the first line of an item (the line with the bullet or number). Some of them imply the application of automatic rules to keep list structure intact. If some of these actions get in your way, configure org-list-automatic-rules to disable them individually.

TAB     (org-cycle)

Items can be folded just like headline levels. Normally this works only if the cursor is on a plain list item. For more details, see the variable org-cycle-include-plain-lists. If this variable is set to integrate, plain list items will be treated like low-level headlines. The level of an item is then given by the indentation of the bullet/number. Items are always subordinate to real headlines, however; the hierarchies remain completely separated. In a new item with no text yet, the first TAB demotes the item to become a child of the previous one. Subsequent TABs move the item to meaningful levels in the list and eventually get it back to its initial position.

M-RET     (org-insert-heading)

Insert new item at current level. With a prefix argument, force a new heading (see Structure editing). If this command is used in the middle of an item, that item is split in two, and the second part becomes the new item¹⁴. If this command is executed before item’s body, the new item is created before the current one.

M-S-RET

Insert a new item with a checkbox (see Checkboxes).

S-up

S-down

Jump to the previous/next item in the current list¹⁵, but only if org-support-shift-select is off. If not, you can still use paragraph jumping commands like C-UP and C-DOWN to quite similar effect.

M-up

M-down

Move the item including subitems up/down¹⁶ (swap with previous/next item of same indentation). If the list is ordered, renumbering is automatic.

M-left

M-right

Decrease/increase the indentation of an item, leaving children alone.

M-S-LEFT

M-S-RIGHT

Decrease/increase the indentation of the item, including subitems. Initially, the item tree is selected based on current indentation. When these commands are executed several times in direct succession, the initially selected region is used, even if the new indentation would imply a different hierarchy. To use the new hierarchy, break the command chain with a cursor motion or so.

As a special case, using this command on the very first item of a list will move the whole list. This behavior can be disabled by configuring org-list-automatic-rules. The global indentation of a list has no influence on the text after the list.

C-c C-c

If there is a checkbox (see Checkboxes) in the item line, toggle the state of the checkbox. In any case, verify bullets and indentation consistency in the whole list.

C-c -

Cycle the entire list level through the different itemize/enumerate bullets (‘-’, ‘+’, ‘*’, ‘1.’, ‘1)’) or a subset of them, depending on org-plain-list-ordered-item-terminator, the type of list, and its indentation. With a numeric prefix argument N, select the Nth bullet from this list. If there is an active region when calling this, all selected lines are converted to list items. With a prefix argument, selected text is changed into a single item. If the first line already was a list item, any item marker will be removed from the list. Finally, even without an active region, a normal line will be converted into a list item.

C-c *

Turn a plain list item into a headline (so that it becomes a subheading at its location). See Structure editing, for a detailed explanation.

C-c C-*

Turn the whole plain list into a subtree of the current heading. Checkboxes (see Checkboxes) will become TODO (resp. DONE) keywords when unchecked (resp. checked).

S-LEFT/RIGHT

This command also cycles bullet styles when the cursor in on the bullet or anywhere in an item line, details depending on org-support-shift-select.

C-c ^

Sort the plain list. You will be prompted for the sorting method: numerically, alphabetically, by time, by checked status for check lists, or by a custom function.

2.8 Drawers

Sometimes you want to keep information associated with an entry, but you normally don’t want to see it. For this, Org mode has drawers. They can contain anything but a headline and another drawer. Drawers look like this:

** This is a headline
   Still outside the drawer
   :DRAWERNAME:
   This is inside the drawer.
   :END:
   After the drawer.

You can interactively insert drawers at point by calling org-insert-drawer, which is bound to C-c C-x d. With an active region, this command will put the region inside the drawer. With a prefix argument, this command calls org-insert-property-drawer and add a property drawer right below the current headline. Completion over drawer keywords is also possible using M-TAB¹⁷.

Visibility cycling (see Visibility cycling) on the headline will hide and show the entry, but keep the drawer collapsed to a single line. In order to look inside the drawer, you need to move the cursor to the drawer line and press TAB there. Org mode uses the PROPERTIES drawer for storing properties (see Properties and columns), and you can also arrange for state change notes (see Tracking TODO state changes) and clock times (see Clocking work time) to be stored in a drawer LOGBOOK. If you want to store a quick note in the LOGBOOK drawer, in a similar way to state changes, use

C-c C-z

Add a time-stamped note to the LOGBOOK drawer.

You can select the name of the drawers which should be exported with org-export-with-drawers. In that case, drawer contents will appear in export output. Property drawers are not affected by this variable: configure org-export-with-properties instead.

2.9 Blocks

Org mode uses begin...end blocks for various purposes from including source code examples (see Literal examples) to capturing time logging information (see Clocking work time). These blocks can be folded and unfolded by pressing TAB in the begin line. You can also get all blocks folded at startup by configuring the option org-hide-block-startup or on a per-file basis by using

#+STARTUP: hideblocks
#+STARTUP: nohideblocks

2.10 Footnotes

Org mode supports the creation of footnotes.

A footnote is started by a footnote marker in square brackets in column 0, no indentation allowed. It ends at the next footnote definition, headline, or after two consecutive empty lines. The footnote reference is simply the marker in square brackets, inside text. Markers always start with fn:. For example:

The Org homepage[fn:1] now looks a lot better than it used to.
...
[fn:1] The link is: https://orgmode.org

Org mode extends the number-based syntax to named footnotes and optional inline definition. Here are the valid references:

[fn:name]

A named footnote reference, where name is a unique label word, or, for simplicity of automatic creation, a number.

[fn::This is the inline definition of this footnote]

A LaTeX-like anonymous footnote where the definition is given directly at the reference point.

[fn:name:a definition]

An inline definition of a footnote, which also specifies a name for the note. Since Org allows multiple references to the same note, you can then use [fn:name] to create additional references.

Footnote labels can be created automatically, or you can create names yourself. This is handled by the variable org-footnote-auto-label and its corresponding #+STARTUP keywords. See the docstring of that variable for details.

The following command handles footnotes:

C-c C-x f

The footnote action command.

When the cursor is on a footnote reference, jump to the definition. When it is at a definition, jump to the (first) reference.

Otherwise, create a new footnote. Depending on the option org-footnote-define-inline¹⁸, the definition will be placed right into the text as part of the reference, or separately into the location determined by the option org-footnote-section.

When this command is called with a prefix argument, a menu of additional options is offered:

s   Sort the footnote definitions by reference sequence.  During editing,
    Org makes no effort to sort footnote definitions into a particular
    sequence.  If you want them sorted, use this command, which will
    also move entries according to org-footnote-section.  Automatic
    sorting after each insertion/deletion can be configured using the
    option org-footnote-auto-adjust.
r   Renumber the simple fn:N footnotes.  Automatic renumbering
    after each insertion/deletion can be configured using the option
    org-footnote-auto-adjust.
S   Short for first r, then s action.
n   Normalize the footnotes by collecting all definitions (including
    inline definitions) into a special section, and then numbering them
    in sequence.  The references will then also be numbers.
d   Delete the footnote at point, and all definitions of and references
    to it.

Depending on the variable org-footnote-auto-adjust¹⁹, renumbering and sorting footnotes can be automatic after each insertion or deletion.

C-c C-c

If the cursor is on a footnote reference, jump to the definition. If it is a the definition, jump back to the reference. When called at a footnote location with a prefix argument, offer the same menu as C-c C-x f.

C-c C-o or mouse-1/2

Footnote labels are also links to the corresponding definition/reference, and you can use the usual commands to follow these links.

C-c '

C-c '

Edit the footnote definition corresponding to the reference at point in a separate window. The window can be closed by pressing C-c '.

2.11 The Orgstruct minor mode

If you like the intuitive way the Org mode structure editing and list formatting works, you might want to use these commands in other modes like Text mode or Mail mode as well. The minor mode orgstruct-mode makes this possible. Toggle the mode with M-x orgstruct-mode RET, or turn it on by default, for example in Message mode, with one of:

(add-hook 'message-mode-hook 'turn-on-orgstruct)
(add-hook 'message-mode-hook 'turn-on-orgstruct++)

When this mode is active and the cursor is on a line that looks to Org like a headline or the first line of a list item, most structure editing commands will work, even if the same keys normally have different functionality in the major mode you are using. If the cursor is not in one of those special lines, Orgstruct mode lurks silently in the shadows.

When you use orgstruct++-mode, Org will also export indentation and autofill settings into that mode, and detect item context after the first line of an item.

You can also use Org structure editing to fold and unfold headlines in any file, provided you defined orgstruct-heading-prefix-regexp: the regular expression must match the local prefix to use before Org’s headlines. For example, if you set this variable to ";; " in Emacs Lisp files, you will be able to fold and unfold headlines in Emacs Lisp commented lines. Some commands like org-demote are disabled when the prefix is set, but folding/unfolding will work correctly.

2.12 Org syntax

A reference document providing a formal description of Org’s syntax is available as a draft on Worg, written and maintained by Nicolas Goaziou. It defines Org’s core internal concepts such as headlines, sections, affiliated keywords, (greater) elements and objects. Each part of an Org file falls into one of the categories above.

To explore the abstract structure of an Org buffer, run this in a buffer:

M-: (org-element-parse-buffer) RET

It will output a list containing the buffer’s content represented as an abstract structure. The export engine relies on the information stored in this list. Most interactive commands (e.g., for structure editing) also rely on the syntactic meaning of the surrounding context.

You can check syntax in your documents using org-lint command.

3 Tables

Org comes with a fast and intuitive table editor. Spreadsheet-like calculations are supported using the Emacs calc package (see Calc in GNU Emacs Calculator Manual).

3.1 The built-in table editor

Org makes it easy to format tables in plain ASCII. Any line with ‘|’ as the first non-whitespace character is considered part of a table. ‘|’ is also the column separator²⁰. A table might look like this:

| Name  | Phone | Age |
|-------+-------+-----|
| Peter |  1234 |  17 |
| Anna  |  4321 |  25 |

A table is re-aligned automatically each time you press TAB or RET or C-c C-c inside the table. TAB also moves to the next field (RET to the next row) and creates new table rows at the end of the table or before horizontal lines. The indentation of the table is set by the first line. Any line starting with ‘|-’ is considered as a horizontal separator line and will be expanded on the next re-align to span the whole table width. So, to create the above table, you would only type

|Name|Phone|Age|
|-

and then press TAB to align the table and start filling in fields. Even faster would be to type |Name|Phone|Age followed by C-c RET.

When typing text into a field, Org treats DEL, Backspace, and all character keys in a special way, so that inserting and deleting avoids shifting other fields. Also, when typing immediately after the cursor was moved into a new field with TAB, S-TAB or RET, the field is automatically made blank. If this behavior is too unpredictable for you, configure the option org-table-auto-blank-field.

Creation and conversion

C-c |     (org-table-create-or-convert-from-region)

Convert the active region to a table. If every line contains at least one TAB character, the function assumes that the material is tab separated. If every line contains a comma, comma-separated values (CSV) are assumed. If not, lines are split at whitespace into fields. You can use a prefix argument to force a specific separator: C-u forces CSV, C-u C-u forces TAB, C-u C-u C-u will prompt for a regular expression to match the separator, and a numeric argument N indicates that at least N consecutive spaces, or alternatively a TAB will be the separator.
If there is no active region, this command creates an empty Org table. But it is easier just to start typing, like |Name|Phone|Age RET |- TAB.

Re-aligning and field motion

C-c C-c     (org-table-align)

Re-align the table and don’t move to another field.

C-c SPC     (org-table-blank-field)

Blank the field at point.

TAB     (org-table-next-field)

Re-align the table, move to the next field. Creates a new row if necessary.

S-TAB     (org-table-previous-field)

Re-align, move to previous field.

RET     (org-table-next-row)

Re-align the table and move down to next row. Creates a new row if necessary. At the beginning or end of a line, RET still does NEWLINE, so it can be used to split a table.

M-a     (org-table-beginning-of-field)

Move to beginning of the current table field, or on to the previous field.

M-e     (org-table-end-of-field)

Move to end of the current table field, or on to the next field.

Column and row editing

M-LEFT     (org-table-move-column-left)

M-RIGHT     (org-table-move-column-right)

Move the current column left/right.

M-S-LEFT     (org-table-delete-column)

Kill the current column.

M-S-RIGHT     (org-table-insert-column)

Insert a new column to the left of the cursor position.

M-UP     (org-table-move-row-up)

M-DOWN     (org-table-move-row-down)

Move the current row up/down.

M-S-UP     (org-table-kill-row)

Kill the current row or horizontal line.

M-S-DOWN     (org-table-insert-row)

Insert a new row above the current row. With a prefix argument, the line is created below the current one.

C-c -     (org-table-insert-hline)

Insert a horizontal line below current row. With a prefix argument, the line is created above the current line.

C-c RET     (org-table-hline-and-move)

Insert a horizontal line below current row, and move the cursor into the row below that line.

C-c ^     (org-table-sort-lines)

Sort the table lines in the region. The position of point indicates the column to be used for sorting, and the range of lines is the range between the nearest horizontal separator lines, or the entire table. If point is before the first column, you will be prompted for the sorting column. If there is an active region, the mark specifies the first line and the sorting column, while point should be in the last line to be included into the sorting. The command prompts for the sorting type (alphabetically, numerically, or by time). You can sort in normal or reverse order. You can also supply your own key extraction and comparison functions. When called with a prefix argument, alphabetic sorting will be case-sensitive.

Regions

C-c C-x M-w     (org-table-copy-region)

Copy a rectangular region from a table to a special clipboard. Point and mark determine edge fields of the rectangle. If there is no active region, copy just the current field. The process ignores horizontal separator lines.

C-c C-x C-w     (org-table-cut-region)

Copy a rectangular region from a table to a special clipboard, and blank all fields in the rectangle. So this is the “cut” operation.

C-c C-x C-y     (org-table-paste-rectangle)

Paste a rectangular region into a table. The upper left corner ends up in the current field. All involved fields will be overwritten. If the rectangle does not fit into the present table, the table is enlarged as needed. The process ignores horizontal separator lines.

M-RET     (org-table-wrap-region)

Split the current field at the cursor position and move the rest to the line below. If there is an active region, and both point and mark are in the same column, the text in the column is wrapped to minimum width for the given number of lines. A numeric prefix argument may be used to change the number of desired lines. If there is no region, but you specify a prefix argument, the current field is made blank, and the content is appended to the field above.

Calculations

C-c +     (org-table-sum)

Sum the numbers in the current column, or in the rectangle defined by the active region. The result is shown in the echo area and can be inserted with C-y.

S-RET     (org-table-copy-down)

When current field is empty, copy from first non-empty field above. When not empty, copy current field down to next row and move cursor along with it. Depending on the option org-table-copy-increment, integer field values will be incremented during copy. Integers that are too large will not be incremented. Also, a 0 prefix argument temporarily disables the increment. This key is also used by shift-selection and related modes (see Conflicts).

Miscellaneous

C-c `     (org-table-edit-field)

Edit the current field in a separate window. This is useful for fields that are not fully visible (see Column width and alignment). When called with a C-u prefix, just make the full field visible, so that it can be edited in place. When called with two C-u prefixes, make the editor window follow the cursor through the table and always show the current field. The follow mode exits automatically when the cursor leaves the table, or when you repeat this command with C-u C-u C-c `.

M-x org-table-import RET

Import a file as a table. The table should be TAB or whitespace separated. Use, for example, to import a spreadsheet table or data from a database, because these programs generally can write TAB-separated text files. This command works by inserting the file into the buffer and then converting the region to a table. Any prefix argument is passed on to the converter, which uses it to determine the separator.

C-c |     (org-table-create-or-convert-from-region)

Tables can also be imported by pasting tabular text into the Org buffer, selecting the pasted text with C-x C-x and then using the C-c | command (see above under Creation and conversion).

M-x org-table-export RET

Export the table, by default as a TAB-separated file. Use for data exchange with, for example, spreadsheet or database programs. The format used to export the file can be configured in the option org-table-export-default-format. You may also use properties TABLE_EXPORT_FILE and TABLE_EXPORT_FORMAT to specify the file name and the format for table export in a subtree. Org supports quite general formats for exported tables. The exporter format is the same as the format used by Orgtbl radio tables, see Translator functions, for a detailed description.

3.2 Column width and alignment

The width of columns is automatically determined by the table editor. And also the alignment of a column is determined automatically from the fraction of number-like versus non-number fields in the column.

Sometimes a single field or a few fields need to carry more text, leading to inconveniently wide columns. Or maybe you want to make a table with several columns having a fixed width, regardless of content. To set the width of a column, one field anywhere in the column may contain just the string ‘<N>’ where ‘N’ is an integer specifying the width of the column in characters. The next re-align will then set the width of this column to this value.

|---+------------------------------|               |---+--------|
|   |                              |               |   | <6>    |
| 1 | one                          |               | 1 | one    |
| 2 | two                          |     ----\     | 2 | two    |
| 3 | This is a long chunk of text |     ----/     | 3 | This=> |
| 4 | four                         |               | 4 | four   |
|---+------------------------------|               |---+--------|

Fields that are wider become clipped and end in the string ‘=>’. Note that the full text is still in the buffer but is hidden. To see the full text, hold the mouse over the field—a tool-tip window will show the full content. To edit such a field, use the command C-c ` (that is C-c followed by the grave accent). This will open a new window with the full field. Edit it and finish with C-c C-c.

When visiting a file containing a table with narrowed columns, the necessary character hiding has not yet happened, and the table needs to be aligned before it looks nice. Setting the option org-startup-align-all-tables will realign all tables in a file upon visiting, but also slow down startup. You can also set this option on a per-file basis with:

#+STARTUP: align
#+STARTUP: noalign

If you would like to overrule the automatic alignment of number-rich columns to the right and of string-rich columns to the left, you can use ‘<r>’, ‘<c>’²¹ or ‘<l>’ in a similar fashion. You may also combine alignment and field width like this: ‘<r10>’.

Lines which only contain these formatting cookies will be removed automatically when exporting the document.

3.3 Column groups

When Org exports tables, it does so by default without vertical lines because that is visually more satisfying in general. Occasionally however, vertical lines can be useful to structure a table into groups of columns, much like horizontal lines can do for groups of rows. In order to specify column groups, you can use a special row where the first field contains only ‘/’. The further fields can either contain ‘<’ to indicate that this column should start a group, ‘>’ to indicate the end of a group, or ‘<>’ (no space between ‘<’ and ‘>’) to make a column a group of its own. Boundaries between column groups will upon export be marked with vertical lines. Here is an example:

| N | N^2 | N^3 | N^4 | ~sqrt(n)~ | ~sqrt[4](N)~ |
|---+-----+-----+-----+-----------+--------------|
| / |   < |     |   > |         < |            > |
| 1 |   1 |   1 |   1 |         1 |            1 |
| 2 |   4 |   8 |  16 |    1.4142 |       1.1892 |
| 3 |   9 |  27 |  81 |    1.7321 |       1.3161 |
|---+-----+-----+-----+-----------+--------------|
#+TBLFM: $2=$1^2::$3=$1^3::$4=$1^4::$5=sqrt($1)::$6=sqrt(sqrt(($1)))

It is also sufficient to just insert the column group starters after every vertical line you would like to have:

|  N | N^2 | N^3 | N^4 | sqrt(n) | sqrt[4](N) |
|----+-----+-----+-----+---------+------------|
| /  | <   |     |     | <       |            |

3.4 The Orgtbl minor mode

If you like the intuitive way the Org table editor works, you might also want to use it in other modes like Text mode or Mail mode. The minor mode Orgtbl mode makes this possible. You can always toggle the mode with M-x orgtbl-mode RET. To turn it on by default, for example in Message mode, use

(add-hook 'message-mode-hook 'turn-on-orgtbl)

Furthermore, with some special setup, it is possible to maintain tables in arbitrary syntax with Orgtbl mode. For example, it is possible to construct LaTeX tables with the underlying ease and power of Orgtbl mode, including spreadsheet capabilities. For details, see Tables in arbitrary syntax.

3.5 The spreadsheet

The table editor makes use of the Emacs calc package to implement spreadsheet-like capabilities. It can also evaluate Emacs Lisp forms to derive fields from other fields. While fully featured, Org’s implementation is not identical to other spreadsheets. For example, Org knows the concept of a column formula that will be applied to all non-header fields in a column without having to copy the formula to each relevant field. There is also a formula debugger, and a formula editor with features for highlighting fields in the table corresponding to the references at the point in the formula, moving these references by arrow keys

3.5.1 References

To compute fields in the table from other fields, formulas must reference other fields or ranges. In Org, fields can be referenced by name, by absolute coordinates, and by relative coordinates. To find out what the coordinates of a field are, press C-c ? in that field, or press C-c } to toggle the display of a grid.

Field references

Formulas can reference the value of another field in two ways. Like in any other spreadsheet, you may reference fields with a letter/number combination like B3, meaning the 2nd field in the 3rd row. However, Org prefers²² to use another, more general representation that looks like this:

@row$column

Column specifications can be absolute like $1, $2,...$N, or relative to the current column (i.e., the column of the field which is being computed) like $+1 or $-2. $< and $> are immutable references to the first and last column, respectively, and you can use $>>> to indicate the third column from the right.

The row specification only counts data lines and ignores horizontal separator lines (hlines). Like with columns, you can use absolute row numbers @1, @2,...@N, and row numbers relative to the current row like @+3 or @-1. @< and @> are immutable references the first and last²³ row in the table, respectively. You may also specify the row relative to one of the hlines: @I refers to the first hline, @II to the second, etc. @-I refers to the first such line above the current line, @+I to the first such line below the current line. You can also write @III+2 which is the second data line after the third hline in the table.

@0 and $0 refer to the current row and column, respectively, i.e., to the row/column for the field being computed. Also, if you omit either the column or the row part of the reference, the current row/column is implied.

Org’s references with unsigned numbers are fixed references in the sense that if you use the same reference in the formula for two different fields, the same field will be referenced each time. Org’s references with signed numbers are floating references because the same reference operator can reference different fields depending on the field being calculated by the formula.

Here are a few examples:

@2$3      2nd row, 3rd column (same as C2)
$5        column 5 in the current row (same as E&)
@2        current column, row 2
@-1$-3    the field one row up, three columns to the left
@-I$2     field just under hline above current row, column 2
@>$5      field in the last row, in column 5

Range references

You may reference a rectangular range of fields by specifying two field references connected by two dots ‘..’. If both fields are in the current row, you may simply use ‘$2..$7’, but if at least one field is in a different row, you need to use the general @row$column format at least for the first field (i.e the reference must start with ‘@’ in order to be interpreted correctly). Examples:

$1..$3        first three fields in the current row
$P..$Q        range, using column names (see under Advanced)
$<<<..$>>     start in third column, continue to the last but one
@2$1..@4$3    6 fields between these two fields (same as A2..C4)
@-1$-2..@-1   3 fields in the row above, starting from 2 columns on the left
@I..II        between first and second hline, short for @I..@II

Range references return a vector of values that can be fed into Calc vector functions. Empty fields in ranges are normally suppressed, so that the vector contains only the non-empty fields. For other options with the mode switches ‘E’, ‘N’ and examples see Formula syntax for Calc.

Field coordinates in formulas

One of the very first actions during evaluation of Calc formulas and Lisp formulas is to substitute @# and $# in the formula with the row or column number of the field where the current result will go to. The traditional Lisp formula equivalents are org-table-current-dline and org-table-current-column. Examples:

if(@# % 2, $#, string(""))

Insert column number on odd rows, set field to empty on even rows.

$2 = '(identity remote(FOO, @@#$1))

Copy text or values of each row of column 1 of the table named FOO into column 2 of the current table.

@3 = 2 * remote(FOO, @1$$#)

Insert the doubled value of each column of row 1 of the table named FOO into row 3 of the current table.

For the second/third example, the table named FOO must have at least as many rows/columns as the current table. Note that this is inefficient²⁴ for large number of rows/columns.

Named references

‘$name’ is interpreted as the name of a column, parameter or constant. Constants are defined globally through the option org-table-formula-constants, and locally (for the file) through a line like

#+CONSTANTS: c=299792458. pi=3.14 eps=2.4e-6

Also properties (see Properties and columns) can be used as constants in table formulas: for a property ‘:Xyz:’ use the name ‘$PROP_Xyz’, and the property will be searched in the current outline entry and in the hierarchy above it. If you have the constants.el package, it will also be used to resolve constants, including natural constants like ‘$h’ for Planck’s constant, and units like ‘$km’ for kilometers²⁵. Column names and parameters can be specified in special table lines. These are described below, see Advanced features. All names must start with a letter, and further consist of letters and numbers.

Remote references

You may also reference constants, fields and ranges from a different table, either in the current file or even in a different file. The syntax is

remote(NAME-OR-ID,REF)

where NAME can be the name of a table in the current file as set by a #+NAME: Name line before the table. It can also be the ID of an entry, even in a different file, and the reference then refers to the first table in that entry. REF is an absolute field or range reference as described above for example @3$3 or $somename, valid in the referenced table.

Indirection of NAME-OR-ID: When NAME-OR-ID has the format @ROW$COLUMN it will be substituted with the name or ID found in this field of the current table. For example remote($1, @>$2) => remote(year_2013, @>$1). The format B3 is not supported because it can not be distinguished from a plain table name or ID.

3.5.2 Formula syntax for Calc

A formula can be any algebraic expression understood by the Emacs Calc package. Note that calc has the non-standard convention that ‘/’ has lower precedence than ‘*’, so that ‘a/b*c’ is interpreted as ‘a/(b*c)’. Before evaluation by calc-eval (see Calling Calc from Your Lisp Programs in GNU Emacs Calc Manual), variable substitution takes place according to the rules described above. The range vectors can be directly fed into the Calc vector functions like ‘vmean’ and ‘vsum’.

A formula can contain an optional mode string after a semicolon. This string consists of flags to influence Calc and other modes during execution. By default, Org uses the standard Calc modes (precision 12, angular units degrees, fraction and symbolic modes off). The display format, however, has been changed to (float 8) to keep tables compact. The default settings can be configured using the option org-calc-default-modes.

List of modes:

p20

Set the internal Calc calculation precision to 20 digits.

n3, s3, e2, f4

Normal, scientific, engineering or fixed format of the result of Calc passed back to Org. Calc formatting is unlimited in precision as long as the Calc calculation precision is greater.

D, R

Degree and radian angle modes of Calc.

F, S

Fraction and symbolic modes of Calc.

T, t, U

Duration computations in Calc or Lisp, see Durations and time values.

E

If and how to consider empty fields. Without ‘E’ empty fields in range references are suppressed so that the Calc vector or Lisp list contains only the non-empty fields. With ‘E’ the empty fields are kept. For empty fields in ranges or empty field references the value ‘nan’ (not a number) is used in Calc formulas and the empty string is used for Lisp formulas. Add ‘N’ to use 0 instead for both formula types. For the value of a field the mode ‘N’ has higher precedence than ‘E’.

N

Interpret all fields as numbers, use 0 for non-numbers. See the next section to see how this is essential for computations with Lisp formulas. In Calc formulas it is used only occasionally because there number strings are already interpreted as numbers without ‘N’.

L

Literal, for Lisp formulas only. See the next section.

Unless you use large integer numbers or high-precision-calculation and -display for floating point numbers you may alternatively provide a ‘printf’ format specifier to reformat the Calc result after it has been passed back to Org instead of letting Calc already do the formatting²⁶. A few examples:

$1+$2                Sum of first and second field
$1+$2;%.2f           Same, format result to two decimals
exp($2)+exp($1)      Math functions can be used
$0;%.1f              Reformat current cell to 1 decimal
($3-32)*5/9          Degrees F -> C conversion
$c/$1/$cm            Hz -> cm conversion, using constants.el
tan($1);Dp3s1        Compute in degrees, precision 3, display SCI 1
sin($1);Dp3%.1e      Same, but use printf specifier for display
taylor($3,x=7,2)     Taylor series of $3, at x=7, second degree

Calc also contains a complete set of logical operations, (see Logical Operations in GNU Emacs Calc Manual). For example

if($1 < 20, teen, string(""))

"teen" if age $1 is less than 20, else the Org table result field is set to empty with the empty string.

if("$1" == "nan" || "$2" == "nan", string(""), $1 + $2); E f-1

Sum of the first two columns. When at least one of the input fields is empty the Org table result field is set to empty. ‘E’ is required to not convert empty fields to 0. ‘f-1’ is an optional Calc format string similar to ‘%.1f’ but leaves empty results empty.

if(typeof(vmean($1..$7)) == 12, string(""), vmean($1..$7); E

Mean value of a range unless there is any empty field. Every field in the range that is empty is replaced by ‘nan’ which lets ‘vmean’ result in ‘nan’. Then ‘typeof == 12’ detects the ‘nan’ from ‘vmean’ and the Org table result field is set to empty. Use this when the sample set is expected to never have missing values.

if("$1..$7" == "[]", string(""), vmean($1..$7))

Mean value of a range with empty fields skipped. Every field in the range that is empty is skipped. When all fields in the range are empty the mean value is not defined and the Org table result field is set to empty. Use this when the sample set can have a variable size.

vmean($1..$7); EN

To complete the example before: Mean value of a range with empty fields counting as samples with value 0. Use this only when incomplete sample sets should be padded with 0 to the full size.

You can add your own Calc functions defined in Emacs Lisp with defmath and use them in formula syntax for Calc.

3.5.3 Emacs Lisp forms as formulas

It is also possible to write a formula in Emacs Lisp. This can be useful for string manipulation and control structures, if Calc’s functionality is not enough.

If a formula starts with an apostrophe followed by an opening parenthesis, then it is evaluated as a Lisp form. The evaluation should return either a string or a number. Just as with calc formulas, you can specify modes and a printf format after a semicolon.

With Emacs Lisp forms, you need to be conscious about the way field references are interpolated into the form. By default, a reference will be interpolated as a Lisp string (in double-quotes) containing the field. If you provide the ‘N’ mode switch, all referenced elements will be numbers (non-number fields will be zero) and interpolated as Lisp numbers, without quotes. If you provide the ‘L’ flag, all fields will be interpolated literally, without quotes. I.e., if you want a reference to be interpreted as a string by the Lisp form, enclose the reference operator itself in double-quotes, like "$3". Ranges are inserted as space-separated fields, so you can embed them in list or vector syntax.

Here are a few examples—note how the ‘N’ mode is used when we do computations in Lisp:

'(concat (substring $1 1 2) (substring $1 0 1) (substring $1 2))

Swap the first two characters of the content of column 1.

'(+ $1 $2);N

Add columns 1 and 2, equivalent to Calc’s $1+$2.

'(apply '+ '($1..$4));N

Compute the sum of columns 1 to 4, like Calc’s vsum($1..$4).

3.5.4 Durations and time values

If you want to compute time values use the T, t, or U flag, either in Calc formulas or Elisp formulas:

  |  Task 1 |   Task 2 |    Total |
  |---------+----------+----------|
  |    2:12 |     1:47 | 03:59:00 |
  |    2:12 |     1:47 |    03:59 |
  | 3:02:20 | -2:07:00 |     0.92 |
  #+TBLFM: @2$3=$1+$2;T::@3$3=$1+$2;U::@4$3=$1+$2;t

Input duration values must be of the form HH:MM[:SS], where seconds are optional. With the T flag, computed durations will be displayed as HH:MM:SS (see the first formula above). With the U flag, seconds will be omitted so that the result will be only HH:MM (see second formula above). Zero-padding of the hours field will depend upon the value of the variable org-table-duration-hour-zero-padding.

With the t flag, computed durations will be displayed according to the value of the option org-table-duration-custom-format, which defaults to 'hours and will display the result as a fraction of hours (see the third formula in the example above).

Negative duration values can be manipulated as well, and integers will be considered as seconds in addition and subtraction.

3.5.5 Field and range formulas

To assign a formula to a particular field, type it directly into the field, preceded by ‘:=’, for example ‘:=vsum(@II..III)’. When you press TAB or RET or C-c C-c with the cursor still in the field, the formula will be stored as the formula for this field, evaluated, and the current field will be replaced with the result.

Formulas are stored in a special line starting with #+TBLFM: directly below the table. If you type the equation in the 4th field of the 3rd data line in the table, the formula will look like ‘@3$4=$1+$2’. When inserting/deleting/swapping columns and rows with the appropriate commands, absolute references (but not relative ones) in stored formulas are modified in order to still reference the same field. To avoid this, in particular in range references, anchor ranges at the table borders (using @<, @>, $<, $>), or at hlines using the @I notation. Automatic adaptation of field references does of course not happen if you edit the table structure with normal editing commands—then you must fix the equations yourself.

Instead of typing an equation into the field, you may also use the following command

C-u C-c =     (org-table-eval-formula)

Install a new formula for the current field. The command prompts for a formula with default taken from the #+TBLFM: line, applies it to the current field, and stores it.

The left-hand side of a formula can also be a special expression in order to assign the formula to a number of different fields. There is no keyboard shortcut to enter such range formulas. To add them, use the formula editor (see Editing and debugging formulas) or edit the #+TBLFM: line directly.

$2=

Column formula, valid for the entire column. This is so common that Org treats these formulas in a special way, see Column formulas.

@3=

Row formula, applies to all fields in the specified row. @>= means the last row.

@1$2..@4$3=

Range formula, applies to all fields in the given rectangular range. This can also be used to assign a formula to some but not all fields in a row.

$name=

Named field, see Advanced features.

3.5.6 Column formulas

When you assign a formula to a simple column reference like $3=, the same formula will be used in all fields of that column, with the following very convenient exceptions: (i) If the table contains horizontal separator hlines with rows above and below, everything before the first such hline is considered part of the table header and will not be modified by column formulas. Therefore a header is mandatory when you use column formulas and want to add hlines to group rows, like for example to separate a total row at the bottom from the summand rows above. (ii) Fields that already get a value from a field/range formula will be left alone by column formulas. These conditions make column formulas very easy to use.

To assign a formula to a column, type it directly into any field in the column, preceded by an equal sign, like ‘=$1+$2’. When you press TAB or RET or C-c C-c with the cursor still in the field, the formula will be stored as the formula for the current column, evaluated and the current field replaced with the result. If the field contains only ‘=’, the previously stored formula for this column is used. For each column, Org will only remember the most recently used formula. In the #+TBLFM: line, column formulas will look like ‘$4=$1+$2’. The left-hand side of a column formula cannot be the name of column, it must be the numeric column reference or $>.

Instead of typing an equation into the field, you may also use the following command:

C-c =     (org-table-eval-formula)

Install a new formula for the current column and replace current field with the result of the formula. The command prompts for a formula, with default taken from the #+TBLFM line, applies it to the current field and stores it. With a numeric prefix argument(e.g., C-5 C-c =) the command will apply it to that many consecutive fields in the current column.

3.5.7 Lookup functions

Org has three predefined Emacs Lisp functions for lookups in tables.

(org-lookup-first VAL S-LIST R-LIST &optional PREDICATE)

Searches for the first element S in list S-LIST for which

(PREDICATE VAL S)

is t; returns the value from the corresponding position in list R-LIST. The default PREDICATE is equal. Note that the parameters VAL and S are passed to PREDICATE in the same order as the corresponding parameters are in the call to org-lookup-first, where VAL precedes S-LIST. If R-LIST is nil, the matching element S of S-LIST is returned.

(org-lookup-last VAL S-LIST R-LIST &optional PREDICATE)

Similar to org-lookup-first above, but searches for the last element for which PREDICATE is t.

(org-lookup-all VAL S-LIST R-LIST &optional PREDICATE)

Similar to org-lookup-first, but searches for all elements for which PREDICATE is t, and returns all corresponding values. This function can not be used by itself in a formula, because it returns a list of values. However, powerful lookups can be built when this function is combined with other Emacs Lisp functions.

If the ranges used in these functions contain empty fields, the E mode for the formula should usually be specified: otherwise empty fields will not be included in S-LIST and/or R-LIST which can, for example, result in an incorrect mapping from an element of S-LIST to the corresponding element of R-LIST.

These three functions can be used to implement associative arrays, count matching cells, rank results, group data etc. For practical examples see this tutorial on Worg.

3.5.8 Editing and debugging formulas

You can edit individual formulas in the minibuffer or directly in the field. Org can also prepare a special buffer with all active formulas of a table. When offering a formula for editing, Org converts references to the standard format (like B3 or D&) if possible. If you prefer to only work with the internal format (like @3$2 or $4), configure the option org-table-use-standard-references.

C-c =  or  C-u C-c =     (org-table-eval-formula)

Edit the formula associated with the current column/field in the minibuffer. See Column formulas, and Field and range formulas.

C-u C-u C-c =     (org-table-eval-formula)

Re-insert the active formula (either a field formula, or a column formula) into the current field, so that you can edit it directly in the field. The advantage over editing in the minibuffer is that you can use the command C-c ?.

C-c ?     (org-table-field-info)

While editing a formula in a table field, highlight the field(s) referenced by the reference at the cursor position in the formula.

C-c }

Toggle the display of row and column numbers for a table, using overlays (org-table-toggle-coordinate-overlays). These are updated each time the table is aligned; you can force it with C-c C-c.

C-c {

Toggle the formula debugger on and off (org-table-toggle-formula-debugger). See below.

C-c '     (org-table-edit-formulas)

Edit all formulas for the current table in a special buffer, where the formulas will be displayed one per line. If the current field has an active formula, the cursor in the formula editor will mark it. While inside the special buffer, Org will automatically highlight any field or range reference at the cursor position. You may edit, remove and add formulas, and use the following commands:

C-c C-c  or  C-x C-s     (org-table-fedit-finish)

Exit the formula editor and store the modified formulas. With C-u prefix, also apply the new formulas to the entire table.

C-c C-q     (org-table-fedit-abort)

Exit the formula editor without installing changes.

C-c C-r     (org-table-fedit-toggle-ref-type)

Toggle all references in the formula editor between standard (like B3) and internal (like @3$2).

TAB     (org-table-fedit-lisp-indent)

Pretty-print or indent Lisp formula at point. When in a line containing a Lisp formula, format the formula according to Emacs Lisp rules. Another TAB collapses the formula back again. In the open formula, TAB re-indents just like in Emacs Lisp mode.

M-TAB     (lisp-complete-symbol)

Complete Lisp symbols, just like in Emacs Lisp mode.²⁷

S-UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT

Shift the reference at point. For example, if the reference is B3 and you press S-RIGHT, it will become C3. This also works for relative references and for hline references.

M-S-UP     (org-table-fedit-line-up)

M-S-DOWN     (org-table-fedit-line-down)

Move the test line for column formulas in the Org buffer up and down.

M-UP     (org-table-fedit-scroll-down)

M-DOWN     (org-table-fedit-scroll-up)

Scroll the window displaying the table.

C-c }

Turn the coordinate grid in the table on and off.

Making a table field blank does not remove the formula associated with the field, because that is stored in a different line (the #+TBLFM line)—during the next recalculation the field will be filled again. To remove a formula from a field, you have to give an empty reply when prompted for the formula, or to edit the #+TBLFM line.

You may edit the #+TBLFM directly and re-apply the changed equations with C-c C-c in that line or with the normal recalculation commands in the table.

Using multiple #+TBLFM lines

You may apply the formula temporarily. This is useful when you switch the formula. Place multiple #+TBLFM lines right after the table, and then press C-c C-c on the formula to apply. Here is an example:

| x | y |
|---+---|
| 1 |   |
| 2 |   |
#+TBLFM: $2=$1*1
#+TBLFM: $2=$1*2

Pressing C-c C-c in the line of ‘#+TBLFM: $2=$1*2’ yields:

| x | y |
|---+---|
| 1 | 2 |
| 2 | 4 |
#+TBLFM: $2=$1*1
#+TBLFM: $2=$1*2

Note: If you recalculate this table (with C-u C-c *, for example), you will get the following result of applying only the first #+TBLFM line.

| x | y |
|---+---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 |
#+TBLFM: $2=$1*1
#+TBLFM: $2=$1*2

Debugging formulas

When the evaluation of a formula leads to an error, the field content becomes the string ‘#ERROR’. If you would like see what is going on during variable substitution and calculation in order to find a bug, turn on formula debugging in the Tbl menu and repeat the calculation, for example by pressing C-u C-u C-c = RET in a field. Detailed information will be displayed.

3.5.9 Updating the table

Recalculation of a table is normally not automatic, but needs to be triggered by a command. See Advanced features, for a way to make recalculation at least semi-automatic.

In order to recalculate a line of a table or the entire table, use the following commands:

C-c *     (org-table-recalculate)

Recalculate the current row by first applying the stored column formulas from left to right, and all field/range formulas in the current row.

C-u C-c *

C-u C-c C-c

Recompute the entire table, line by line. Any lines before the first hline are left alone, assuming that these are part of the table header.

C-u C-u C-c *  or  C-u C-u C-c C-c     (org-table-iterate)

Iterate the table by recomputing it until no further changes occur. This may be necessary if some computed fields use the value of other fields that are computed later in the calculation sequence.

M-x org-table-recalculate-buffer-tables RET

Recompute all tables in the current buffer.

M-x org-table-iterate-buffer-tables RET

Iterate all tables in the current buffer, in order to converge table-to-table dependencies.

3.5.10 Advanced features

If you want the recalculation of fields to happen automatically, or if you want to be able to assign names²⁸ to fields and columns, you need to reserve the first column of the table for special marking characters.

C-#     (org-table-rotate-recalc-marks)

Rotate the calculation mark in first column through the states ‘ ’, ‘#’, ‘*’, ‘!’, ‘$’. When there is an active region, change all marks in the region.

Here is an example of a table that collects exam results of students and makes use of these features:

|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
|   | Student | Prob 1 | Prob 2 | Prob 3 | Total | Note |
|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
| ! |         |     P1 |     P2 |     P3 |   Tot |      |
| # | Maximum |     10 |     15 |     25 |    50 | 10.0 |
| ^ |         |     m1 |     m2 |     m3 |    mt |      |
|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
| # | Peter   |     10 |      8 |     23 |    41 |  8.2 |
| # | Sam     |      2 |      4 |      3 |     9 |  1.8 |
|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
|   | Average |        |        |        |  25.0 |      |
| ^ |         |        |        |        |    at |      |
| $ | max=50  |        |        |        |       |      |
|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
#+TBLFM: $6=vsum($P1..$P3)::$7=10*$Tot/$max;%.1f::$at=vmean(@-II..@-I);%.1f

Important: please note that for these special tables, recalculating the table with C-u C-c * will only affect rows that are marked ‘#’ or ‘*’, and fields that have a formula assigned to the field itself. The column formulas are not applied in rows with empty first field.

The marking characters have the following meaning:

‘!’

The fields in this line define names for the columns, so that you may refer to a column as ‘$Tot’ instead of ‘$6’.

‘^’

This row defines names for the fields above the row. With such a definition, any formula in the table may use ‘$m1’ to refer to the value ‘10’. Also, if you assign a formula to a names field, it will be stored as ‘$name=...’.

‘_’

Similar to ‘^’, but defines names for the fields in the row below.

‘$’

Fields in this row can define parameters for formulas. For example, if a field in a ‘$’ row contains ‘max=50’, then formulas in this table can refer to the value 50 using ‘$max’. Parameters work exactly like constants, only that they can be defined on a per-table basis.

‘#’

Fields in this row are automatically recalculated when pressing TAB or RET or S-TAB in this row. Also, this row is selected for a global recalculation with C-u C-c *. Unmarked lines will be left alone by this command.

‘*’

Selects this line for global recalculation with C-u C-c *, but not for automatic recalculation. Use this when automatic recalculation slows down editing too much.

‘ ’

Unmarked lines are exempt from recalculation with C-u C-c *. All lines that should be recalculated should be marked with ‘#’ or ‘*’.

‘/’

Do not export this line. Useful for lines that contain the narrowing ‘<N>’ markers or column group markers.

Finally, just to whet your appetite for what can be done with the fantastic calc.el package, here is a table that computes the Taylor series of degree n at location x for a couple of functions.

|---+-------------+---+-----+--------------------------------------|
|   | Func        | n | x   | Result                               |
|---+-------------+---+-----+--------------------------------------|
| # | exp(x)      | 1 | x   | 1 + x                                |
| # | exp(x)      | 2 | x   | 1 + x + x^2 / 2                      |
| # | exp(x)      | 3 | x   | 1 + x + x^2 / 2 + x^3 / 6            |
| # | x^2+sqrt(x) | 2 | x=0 | x*(0.5 / 0) + x^2 (2 - 0.25 / 0) / 2 |
| # | x^2+sqrt(x) | 2 | x=1 | 2 + 2.5 x - 2.5 + 0.875 (x - 1)^2    |
| * | tan(x)      | 3 | x   | 0.0175 x + 1.77e-6 x^3               |
|---+-------------+---+-----+--------------------------------------|
#+TBLFM: $5=taylor($2,$4,$3);n3

3.6 Org-Plot

Org-Plot can produce graphs of information stored in org tables, either graphically or in ASCII-art.

Graphical plots using Gnuplot

Org-Plot produces 2D and 3D graphs using Gnuplot http://www.gnuplot.info/ and gnuplot-mode http://xafs.org/BruceRavel/GnuplotMode. To see this in action, ensure that you have both Gnuplot and Gnuplot mode installed on your system, then call C-c " g or M-x org-plot/gnuplot RET on the following table.

#+PLOT: title:"Citas" ind:1 deps:(3) type:2d with:histograms set:"yrange [0:]"
| Sede      | Max cites | H-index |
|-----------+-----------+---------|
| Chile     |    257.72 |   21.39 |
| Leeds     |    165.77 |   19.68 |
| Sao Paolo |     71.00 |   11.50 |
| Stockholm |    134.19 |   14.33 |
| Morelia   |    257.56 |   17.67 |

Notice that Org Plot is smart enough to apply the table’s headers as labels. Further control over the labels, type, content, and appearance of plots can be exercised through the #+PLOT: lines preceding a table. See below for a complete list of Org-plot options. The #+PLOT: lines are optional. For more information and examples see the Org-plot tutorial at https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-plot.html.

Plot Options

set

Specify any gnuplot option to be set when graphing.

title

Specify the title of the plot.

ind

Specify which column of the table to use as the x axis.

deps

Specify the columns to graph as a Lisp style list, surrounded by parentheses and separated by spaces for example dep:(3 4) to graph the third and fourth columns (defaults to graphing all other columns aside from the ind column).

type

Specify whether the plot will be 2d, 3d, or grid.

with

Specify a with option to be inserted for every col being plotted (e.g., lines, points, boxes, impulses, etc...). Defaults to lines.

file

If you want to plot to a file, specify "path/to/desired/output-file".

labels

List of labels to be used for the deps (defaults to the column headers if they exist).

line

Specify an entire line to be inserted in the Gnuplot script.

map

When plotting 3d or grid types, set this to t to graph a flat mapping rather than a 3d slope.

timefmt

Specify format of Org mode timestamps as they will be parsed by Gnuplot. Defaults to ‘%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S’.

script

If you want total control, you can specify a script file (place the file name between double-quotes) which will be used to plot. Before plotting, every instance of $datafile in the specified script will be replaced with the path to the generated data file. Note: even if you set this option, you may still want to specify the plot type, as that can impact the content of the data file.

ASCII bar plots

While the cursor is on a column, typing C-c " a or M-x orgtbl-ascii-plot RET create a new column containing an ASCII-art bars plot. The plot is implemented through a regular column formula. When the source column changes, the bar plot may be updated by refreshing the table, for example typing C-u C-c *.

| Sede          | Max cites |              |
|---------------+-----------+--------------|
| Chile         |    257.72 | WWWWWWWWWWWW |
| Leeds         |    165.77 | WWWWWWWh     |
| Sao Paolo     |     71.00 | WWW;         |
| Stockholm     |    134.19 | WWWWWW:      |
| Morelia       |    257.56 | WWWWWWWWWWWH |
| Rochefourchat |      0.00 |              |
#+TBLFM: $3='(orgtbl-ascii-draw $2 0.0 257.72 12)

The formula is an elisp call:

(orgtbl-ascii-draw COLUMN MIN MAX WIDTH)

COLUMN

is a reference to the source column.

MIN MAX

are the minimal and maximal values displayed. Sources values outside this range are displayed as ‘too small’ or ‘too large’.

WIDTH

is the width in characters of the bar-plot. It defaults to ‘12’.

4 Hyperlinks

Like HTML, Org provides links inside a file, external links to other files, Usenet articles, emails, and much more.

4.1 Link format

Org will recognize plain URL-like links and activate them as clickable links. The general link format, however, looks like this:

[[link][description]]       or alternatively           [[link]]

Once a link in the buffer is complete (all brackets present), Org will change the display so that ‘description’ is displayed instead of ‘[[link][description]]’ and ‘link’ is displayed instead of ‘[[link]]’. Links will be highlighted in the face org-link, which by default is an underlined face. You can directly edit the visible part of a link. Note that this can be either the ‘link’ part (if there is no description) or the ‘description’ part. To edit also the invisible ‘link’ part, use C-c C-l with the cursor on the link.

If you place the cursor at the beginning or just behind the end of the displayed text and press BACKSPACE, you will remove the (invisible) bracket at that location. This makes the link incomplete and the internals are again displayed as plain text. Inserting the missing bracket hides the link internals again. To show the internal structure of all links, use the menu entry Org->Hyperlinks->Literal links.

4.2 Internal links

If the link does not look like a URL, it is considered to be internal in the current file. The most important case is a link like ‘[[#my-custom-id]]’ which will link to the entry with the CUSTOM_ID property ‘my-custom-id’. You are responsible yourself to make sure these custom IDs are unique in a file.

Links such as ‘[[My Target]]’ or ‘[[My Target][Find my target]]’ lead to a text search in the current file.

The link can be followed with C-c C-o when the cursor is on the link, or with a mouse click (see Handling links). Links to custom IDs will point to the corresponding headline. The preferred match for a text link is a dedicated target: the same string in double angular brackets, like ‘<<My Target>>’.

If no dedicated target exists, the link will then try to match the exact name of an element within the buffer. Naming is done with the #+NAME keyword, which has to be put in the line before the element it refers to, as in the following example

#+NAME: My Target
| a  | table      |
|----+------------|
| of | four cells |

If none of the above succeeds, Org will search for a headline that is exactly the link text but may also include a TODO keyword and tags²⁹.

During export, internal links will be used to mark objects and assign them a number. Marked objects will then be referenced by links pointing to them. In particular, links without a description will appear as the number assigned to the marked object³⁰. In the following excerpt from an Org buffer

- one item
- <<target>>another item
Here we refer to item [[target]].

The last sentence will appear as ‘Here we refer to item 2’ when exported.

In non-Org files, the search will look for the words in the link text. In the above example the search would be for ‘my target’.

Following a link pushes a mark onto Org’s own mark ring. You can return to the previous position with C-c &. Using this command several times in direct succession goes back to positions recorded earlier.

4.2.1 Radio targets

Org can automatically turn any occurrences of certain target names in normal text into a link. So without explicitly creating a link, the text connects to the target radioing its position. Radio targets are enclosed by triple angular brackets. For example, a target ‘<<<My Target>>>’ causes each occurrence of ‘my target’ in normal text to become activated as a link. The Org file is scanned automatically for radio targets only when the file is first loaded into Emacs. To update the target list during editing, press C-c C-c with the cursor on or at a target.

4.3 External links

Org supports links to files, websites, Usenet and email messages, BBDB database entries and links to both IRC conversations and their logs. External links are URL-like locators. They start with a short identifying string followed by a colon. There can be no space after the colon. The following list shows examples for each link type.

http://www.astro.uva.nl/~dominik             on the web
doi:10.1000/182                              DOI for an electronic resource
file:/home/dominik/images/jupiter.jpg        file, absolute path
/home/dominik/images/jupiter.jpg             same as above
file:papers/last.pdf                         file, relative path
./papers/last.pdf                            same as above
file:/ssh:myself@some.where:papers/last.pdf  file, path on remote machine
/ssh:myself@some.where:papers/last.pdf       same as above
file:sometextfile::NNN                       file, jump to line number
file:projects.org                            another Org file
file:projects.org::some words                text search in Org file(31)
file:projects.org::*task title               heading search in Org file(32)
docview:papers/last.pdf::NNN                 open in doc-view mode at page
id:B7423F4D-2E8A-471B-8810-C40F074717E9      Link to heading by ID
news:comp.emacs                              Usenet link
mailto:adent@galaxy.net                      Mail link
mhe:folder                                   MH-E folder link
mhe:folder#id                                MH-E message link
rmail:folder                                 RMAIL folder link
rmail:folder#id                              RMAIL message link
gnus:group                                   Gnus group link
gnus:group#id                                Gnus article link
bbdb:R.*Stallman                             BBDB link (with regexp)
irc:/irc.com/#emacs/bob                      IRC link
info:org#External links                      Info node or index link
shell:ls *.org                               A shell command
elisp:org-agenda                             Interactive Elisp command
elisp:(find-file-other-frame "Elisp.org")    Elisp form to evaluate

On top of these built-in link types, some are available through the contrib/ directory (see Installation). For example, these links to VM or Wanderlust messages are available when you load the corresponding libraries from the contrib/ directory:

vm:folder                                    VM folder link
vm:folder#id                                 VM message link
vm://myself@some.where.org/folder#id         VM on remote machine
vm-imap:account:folder                       VM IMAP folder link
vm-imap:account:folder#id                    VM IMAP message link
wl:folder                                    WANDERLUST folder link
wl:folder#id                                 WANDERLUST message link

For customizing Org to add new link types Adding hyperlink types.

A link should be enclosed in double brackets and may contain a descriptive text to be displayed instead of the URL (see Link format), for example:

[[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/][GNU Emacs]]

If the description is a file name or URL that points to an image, HTML export (see HTML export) will inline the image as a clickable button. If there is no description at all and the link points to an image, that image will be inlined into the exported HTML file.

Org also finds external links in the normal text and activates them as links. If spaces must be part of the link (for example in ‘bbdb:Richard Stallman’), or if you need to remove ambiguities about the end of the link, enclose them in square brackets.

4.4 Handling links

Org provides methods to create a link in the correct syntax, to insert it into an Org file, and to follow the link.

C-c l     (org-store-link)

Store a link to the current location. This is a global command (you must create the key binding yourself) which can be used in any buffer to create a link. The link will be stored for later insertion into an Org buffer (see below). What kind of link will be created depends on the current buffer:

Org mode buffers
For Org files, if there is a ‘<<target>>’ at the cursor, the link points to the target. Otherwise it points to the current headline, which will also be the description³³.

If the headline has a CUSTOM_ID property, a link to this custom ID will be stored. In addition or alternatively (depending on the value of org-id-link-to-org-use-id), a globally unique ID property will be created and/or used to construct a link³⁴. So using this command in Org buffers will potentially create two links: a human-readable from the custom ID, and one that is globally unique and works even if the entry is moved from file to file. Later, when inserting the link, you need to decide which one to use.

Email/News clients: VM, Rmail, Wanderlust, MH-E, Gnus
Pretty much all Emacs mail clients are supported. The link will point to the current article, or, in some GNUS buffers, to the group. The description is constructed from the author and the subject.

Web browsers: Eww, W3 and W3M
Here the link will be the current URL, with the page title as description.

Contacts: BBDB
Links created in a BBDB buffer will point to the current entry.

Chat: IRC
For IRC links, if you set the option org-irc-link-to-logs to t, a ‘file:/’ style link to the relevant point in the logs for the current conversation is created. Otherwise an ‘irc:/’ style link to the user/channel/server under the point will be stored.

Other files
For any other files, the link will point to the file, with a search string (see Search options) pointing to the contents of the current line. If there is an active region, the selected words will form the basis of the search string. If the automatically created link is not working correctly or accurately enough, you can write custom functions to select the search string and to do the search for particular file types—see Custom searches. The key binding C-c l is only a suggestion—see Installation.

Agenda view
When the cursor is in an agenda view, the created link points to the entry referenced by the current line.

C-c C-l     (org-insert-link)

Insert a link³⁵. This prompts for a link to be inserted into the buffer. You can just type a link, using text for an internal link, or one of the link type prefixes mentioned in the examples above. The link will be inserted into the buffer³⁶, along with a descriptive text. If some text was selected when this command is called, the selected text becomes the default description.

Inserting stored links
All links stored during the current session are part of the history for this prompt, so you can access them with UP and DOWN (or M-p/n).

Completion support
Completion with TAB will help you to insert valid link prefixes like ‘https:’, including the prefixes defined through link abbreviations (see Link abbreviations). If you press RET after inserting only the prefix, Org will offer specific completion support for some link types³⁷ For example, if you type file RET, file name completion (alternative access: C-u C-c C-l, see below) will be offered, and after bbdb RET you can complete contact names.

C-u C-c C-l

When C-c C-l is called with a C-u prefix argument, a link to a file will be inserted and you may use file name completion to select the name of the file. The path to the file is inserted relative to the directory of the current Org file, if the linked file is in the current directory or in a sub-directory of it, or if the path is written relative to the current directory using ‘../’. Otherwise an absolute path is used, if possible with ‘~/’ for your home directory. You can force an absolute path with two C-u prefixes.

C-c C-l  (with cursor on existing link)

When the cursor is on an existing link, C-c C-l allows you to edit the link and description parts of the link.

C-c C-o     (org-open-at-point)

Open link at point. This will launch a web browser for URLs (using browse-url-at-point), run VM/MH-E/Wanderlust/Rmail/Gnus/BBDB for the corresponding links, and execute the command in a shell link. When the cursor is on an internal link, this command runs the corresponding search. When the cursor is on a TAG list in a headline, it creates the corresponding TAGS view. If the cursor is on a timestamp, it compiles the agenda for that date. Furthermore, it will visit text and remote files in ‘file:’ links with Emacs and select a suitable application for local non-text files. Classification of files is based on file extension only. See option org-file-apps. If you want to override the default application and visit the file with Emacs, use a C-u prefix. If you want to avoid opening in Emacs, use a C-u C-u prefix.
If the cursor is on a headline, but not on a link, offer all links in the headline and entry text. If you want to setup the frame configuration for following links, customize org-link-frame-setup.

RET

When org-return-follows-link is set, RET will also follow the link at point.

mouse-2

mouse-1

On links, mouse-1 and mouse-2 will open the link just as C-c C-o would.

mouse-3

Like mouse-2, but force file links to be opened with Emacs, and internal links to be displayed in another window³⁸.

C-c C-x C-v     (org-toggle-inline-images)

Toggle the inline display of linked images. Normally this will only inline images that have no description part in the link, i.e., images that will also be inlined during export. When called with a prefix argument, also display images that do have a link description. You can ask for inline images to be displayed at startup by configuring the variable org-startup-with-inline-images³⁹.

C-c %     (org-mark-ring-push)

Push the current position onto the mark ring, to be able to return easily. Commands following an internal link do this automatically.

C-c &     (org-mark-ring-goto)

Jump back to a recorded position. A position is recorded by the commands following internal links, and by C-c %. Using this command several times in direct succession moves through a ring of previously recorded positions.

C-c C-x C-n     (org-next-link)

C-c C-x C-p     (org-previous-link)

Move forward/backward to the next link in the buffer. At the limit of the buffer, the search fails once, and then wraps around. The key bindings for this are really too long; you might want to bind this also to C-n and C-p

(add-hook 'org-load-hook
  (lambda ()
    (define-key org-mode-map "\C-n" 'org-next-link)
    (define-key org-mode-map "\C-p" 'org-previous-link)))

4.5 Using links outside Org

You can insert and follow links that have Org syntax not only in Org, but in any Emacs buffer. For this, you should create two global commands, like this (please select suitable global keys yourself):

(global-set-key "\C-c L" 'org-insert-link-global)
(global-set-key "\C-c o" 'org-open-at-point-global)

4.6 Link abbreviations

Long URLs can be cumbersome to type, and often many similar links are needed in a document. For this you can use link abbreviations. An abbreviated link looks like this

[[linkword:tag][description]]

where the tag is optional. The linkword must be a word, starting with a letter, followed by letters, numbers, ‘-’, and ‘_’. Abbreviations are resolved according to the information in the variable org-link-abbrev-alist that relates the linkwords to replacement text. Here is an example:

(setq org-link-abbrev-alist
  '(("bugzilla"  . "http://10.1.2.9/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=")
    ("url-to-ja" . "http://translate.google.fr/translate?sl=en&tl=ja&u=%h")
    ("google"    . "http://www.google.com/search?q=")
    ("gmap"      . "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s")
    ("omap"      . "http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?q=%s&polygon=1")
    ("ads"       . "http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?author=%s&db_key=AST")))

If the replacement text contains the string ‘%s’, it will be replaced with the tag. Using ‘%h’ instead of ‘%s’ will url-encode the tag (see the example above, where we need to encode the URL parameter.) Using ‘%(my-function)’ will pass the tag to a custom function, and replace it by the resulting string.

If the replacement text doesn’t contain any specifier, the tag will simply be appended in order to create the link.

Instead of a string, you may also specify a function that will be called with the tag as the only argument to create the link.

With the above setting, you could link to a specific bug with [[bugzilla:129]], search the web for ‘OrgMode’ with [[google:OrgMode]], show the map location of the Free Software Foundation [[gmap:51 Franklin Street, Boston]] or of Carsten office [[omap:Science Park 904, Amsterdam, The Netherlands]] and find out what the Org author is doing besides Emacs hacking with [[ads:Dominik,C]].

If you need special abbreviations just for a single Org buffer, you can define them in the file with

#+LINK: bugzilla  http://10.1.2.9/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=
#+LINK: google    http://www.google.com/search?q=%s

In-buffer completion (see Completion) can be used after ‘[’ to complete link abbreviations. You may also define a function that implements special (e.g., completion) support for inserting such a link with C-c C-l. Such a function should not accept any arguments, and return the full link with prefix. You can add a completion function to a link like this:

(org-link-set-parameters ``type'' :complete #'some-function)

4.7 Search options in file links

File links can contain additional information to make Emacs jump to a particular location in the file when following a link. This can be a line number or a search option after a double⁴⁰ colon. For example, when the command C-c l creates a link (see Handling links) to a file, it encodes the words in the current line as a search string that can be used to find this line back later when following the link with C-c C-o.

Here is the syntax of the different ways to attach a search to a file link, together with an explanation:

[[file:~/code/main.c::255]]
[[file:~/xx.org::My Target]]
[[file:~/xx.org::*My Target]]
[[file:~/xx.org::#my-custom-id]]
[[file:~/xx.org::/regexp/]]

255

Jump to line 255.

My Target

Search for a link target ‘<<My Target>>’, or do a text search for ‘my target’, similar to the search in internal links, see Internal links. In HTML export (see HTML export), such a file link will become an HTML reference to the corresponding named anchor in the linked file.

*My Target

In an Org file, restrict search to headlines.

#my-custom-id

Link to a heading with a CUSTOM_ID property

/regexp/

Do a regular expression search for regexp. This uses the Emacs command occur to list all matches in a separate window. If the target file is in Org mode, org-occur is used to create a sparse tree with the matches.

As a degenerate case, a file link with an empty file name can be used to search the current file. For example, [[file:::find me]] does a search for ‘find me’ in the current file, just as ‘[[find me]]’ would.

4.8 Custom Searches

The default mechanism for creating search strings and for doing the actual search related to a file link may not work correctly in all cases. For example, BibTeX database files have many entries like ‘year="1993"’ which would not result in good search strings, because the only unique identification for a BibTeX entry is the citation key.

If you come across such a problem, you can write custom functions to set the right search string for a particular file type, and to do the search for the string in the file. Using add-hook, these functions need to be added to the hook variables org-create-file-search-functions and org-execute-file-search-functions. See the docstring for these variables for more information. Org actually uses this mechanism for BibTeX database files, and you can use the corresponding code as an implementation example. See the file org-bibtex.el.

5 TODO items

Org mode does not maintain TODO lists as separate documents⁴¹. Instead, TODO items are an integral part of the notes file, because TODO items usually come up while taking notes! With Org mode, simply mark any entry in a tree as being a TODO item. In this way, information is not duplicated, and the entire context from which the TODO item emerged is always present.

Of course, this technique for managing TODO items scatters them throughout your notes file. Org mode compensates for this by providing methods to give you an overview of all the things that you have to do.

5.1 Basic TODO functionality

Any headline becomes a TODO item when it starts with the word ‘TODO’, for example:

*** TODO Write letter to Sam Fortune

The most important commands to work with TODO entries are:

C-c C-t     (org-todo)

Rotate the TODO state of the current item among

,-> (unmarked) -> TODO -> DONE --.
'--------------------------------'

If TODO keywords have fast access keys (see Fast access to TODO states), you will be prompted for a TODO keyword through the fast selection interface; this is the default behavior when org-use-fast-todo-selection is non-nil.

The same rotation can also be done “remotely” from agenda buffers with the t command key (see Agenda commands).

C-u C-c C-t

When TODO keywords have no selection keys, select a specific keyword using completion; otherwise force cycling through TODO states with no prompt. When org-use-fast-todo-selection is set to prefix, use the fast selection interface.

S-RIGHT  /  S-LEFT

Select the following/preceding TODO state, similar to cycling. Useful mostly if more than two TODO states are possible (see TODO extensions). See also Conflicts, for a discussion of the interaction with shift-selection-mode. See also the variable org-treat-S-cursor-todo-selection-as-state-change.

C-c / t     (org-show-todo-tree)

View TODO items in a sparse tree (see Sparse trees). Folds the entire buffer, but shows all TODO items (with not-DONE state) and the headings hierarchy above them. With a prefix argument (or by using C-c / T), search for a specific TODO. You will be prompted for the keyword, and you can also give a list of keywords like KWD1|KWD2|... to list entries that match any one of these keywords. With a numeric prefix argument N, show the tree for the Nth keyword in the option org-todo-keywords. With two prefix arguments, find all TODO states, both un-done and done.

C-c a t     (org-todo-list)

Show the global TODO list. Collects the TODO items (with not-DONE states) from all agenda files (see Agenda views) into a single buffer. The new buffer will be in agenda-mode, which provides commands to examine and manipulate the TODO entries from the new buffer (see Agenda commands). See Global TODO list, for more information.

S-M-RET     (org-insert-todo-heading)

Insert a new TODO entry below the current one.

Changing a TODO state can also trigger tag changes. See the docstring of the option org-todo-state-tags-triggers for details.

5.2 Extended use of TODO keywords

By default, marked TODO entries have one of only two states: TODO and DONE. Org mode allows you to classify TODO items in more complex ways with TODO keywords (stored in org-todo-keywords). With special setup, the TODO keyword system can work differently in different files.

Note that tags are another way to classify headlines in general and TODO items in particular (see Tags).

5.2.1 TODO keywords as workflow states

You can use TODO keywords to indicate different sequential states in the process of working on an item, for example⁴²:

(setq org-todo-keywords
  '((sequence "TODO" "FEEDBACK" "VERIFY" "|" "DONE" "DELEGATED")))

The vertical bar separates the TODO keywords (states that need action) from the DONE states (which need no further action). If you don’t provide the separator bar, the last state is used as the DONE state. With this setup, the command C-c C-t will cycle an entry from TODO to FEEDBACK, then to VERIFY, and finally to DONE and DELEGATED. You may also use a numeric prefix argument to quickly select a specific state. For example C-3 C-c C-t will change the state immediately to VERIFY. Or you can use S-LEFT to go backward through the sequence. If you define many keywords, you can use in-buffer completion (see Completion) or even a special one-key selection scheme (see Fast access to TODO states) to insert these words into the buffer. Changing a TODO state can be logged with a timestamp, see Tracking TODO state changes, for more information.

5.2.2 TODO keywords as types

The second possibility is to use TODO keywords to indicate different types of action items. For example, you might want to indicate that items are for “work” or “home”. Or, when you work with several people on a single project, you might want to assign action items directly to persons, by using their names as TODO keywords. This would be set up like this:

(setq org-todo-keywords '((type "Fred" "Sara" "Lucy" "|" "DONE")))

In this case, different keywords do not indicate a sequence, but rather different types. So the normal work flow would be to assign a task to a person, and later to mark it DONE. Org mode supports this style by adapting the workings of the command C-c C-t⁴³. When used several times in succession, it will still cycle through all names, in order to first select the right type for a task. But when you return to the item after some time and execute C-c C-t again, it will switch from any name directly to DONE. Use prefix arguments or completion to quickly select a specific name. You can also review the items of a specific TODO type in a sparse tree by using a numeric prefix to C-c / t. For example, to see all things Lucy has to do, you would use C-3 C-c / t. To collect Lucy’s items from all agenda files into a single buffer, you would use the numeric prefix argument as well when creating the global TODO list: C-3 C-c a t.

5.2.3 Multiple keyword sets in one file

Sometimes you may want to use different sets of TODO keywords in parallel. For example, you may want to have the basic TODO/DONE, but also a workflow for bug fixing, and a separate state indicating that an item has been canceled (so it is not DONE, but also does not require action). Your setup would then look like this:

(setq org-todo-keywords
      '((sequence "TODO" "|" "DONE")
        (sequence "REPORT" "BUG" "KNOWNCAUSE" "|" "FIXED")
        (sequence "|" "CANCELED")))

The keywords should all be different, this helps Org mode to keep track of which subsequence should be used for a given entry. In this setup, C-c C-t only operates within a subsequence, so it switches from DONE to (nothing) to TODO, and from FIXED to (nothing) to REPORT. Therefore you need a mechanism to initially select the correct sequence. Besides the obvious ways like typing a keyword or using completion, you may also apply the following commands:

C-u C-u C-c C-t

C-S-RIGHT

C-S-LEFT

These keys jump from one TODO subset to the next. In the above example, C-u C-u C-c C-t or C-S-RIGHT would jump from TODO or DONE to REPORT, and any of the words in the second row to CANCELED. Note that the C-S- key binding conflict with shift-selection-mode (see Conflicts).

S-RIGHT

S-LEFT

S-LEFT and S-RIGHT and walk through all keywords from all sets, so for example S-RIGHT would switch from DONE to REPORT in the example above. See also Conflicts, for a discussion of the interaction with shift-selection-mode.

5.2.4 Fast access to TODO states

If you would like to quickly change an entry to an arbitrary TODO state instead of cycling through the states, you can set up keys for single-letter access to the states. This is done by adding the selection character after each keyword, in parentheses⁴⁴. For example:

(setq org-todo-keywords
      '((sequence "TODO(t)" "|" "DONE(d)")
        (sequence "REPORT(r)" "BUG(b)" "KNOWNCAUSE(k)" "|" "FIXED(f)")
        (sequence "|" "CANCELED(c)")))

If you then press C-c C-t followed by the selection key, the entry will be switched to this state. SPC can be used to remove any TODO keyword from an entry.⁴⁵

5.2.5 Setting up keywords for individual files

It can be very useful to use different aspects of the TODO mechanism in different files. For file-local settings, you need to add special lines to the file which set the keywords and interpretation for that file only. For example, to set one of the two examples discussed above, you need one of the following lines anywhere in the file:

#+TODO: TODO FEEDBACK VERIFY | DONE CANCELED

(you may also write #+SEQ_TODO to be explicit about the interpretation, but it means the same as #+TODO), or

#+TYP_TODO: Fred Sara Lucy Mike | DONE

A setup for using several sets in parallel would be:

#+TODO: TODO | DONE
#+TODO: REPORT BUG KNOWNCAUSE | FIXED
#+TODO: | CANCELED

To make sure you are using the correct keyword, type ‘#+’ into the buffer and then use M-TAB completion.

Remember that the keywords after the vertical bar (or the last keyword if no bar is there) must always mean that the item is DONE (although you may use a different word). After changing one of these lines, use C-c C-c with the cursor still in the line to make the changes known to Org mode⁴⁶.

5.2.6 Faces for TODO keywords

Org mode highlights TODO keywords with special faces: org-todo for keywords indicating that an item still has to be acted upon, and org-done for keywords indicating that an item is finished. If you are using more than 2 different states, you might want to use special faces for some of them. This can be done using the option org-todo-keyword-faces. For example:

(setq org-todo-keyword-faces
      '(("TODO" . org-warning) ("STARTED" . "yellow")
        ("CANCELED" . (:foreground "blue" :weight bold))))

While using a list with face properties as shown for CANCELED should work, this does not always seem to be the case. If necessary, define a special face and use that. A string is interpreted as a color. The option org-faces-easy-properties determines if that color is interpreted as a foreground or a background color.

5.2.7 TODO dependencies

The structure of Org files (hierarchy and lists) makes it easy to define TODO dependencies. Usually, a parent TODO task should not be marked DONE until all subtasks (defined as children tasks) are marked as DONE. And sometimes there is a logical sequence to a number of (sub)tasks, so that one task cannot be acted upon before all siblings above it are done. If you customize the option org-enforce-todo-dependencies, Org will block entries from changing state to DONE while they have children that are not DONE. Furthermore, if an entry has a property ORDERED, each of its children will be blocked until all earlier siblings are marked DONE. Here is an example:

* TODO Blocked until (two) is done
** DONE one
** TODO two

* Parent
  :PROPERTIES:
  :ORDERED: t
  :END:
** TODO a
** TODO b, needs to wait for (a)
** TODO c, needs to wait for (a) and (b)

You can ensure an entry is never blocked by using the NOBLOCKING property:

* This entry is never blocked
  :PROPERTIES:
  :NOBLOCKING: t
  :END:

C-c C-x o     (org-toggle-ordered-property)

Toggle the ORDERED property of the current entry. A property is used for this behavior because this should be local to the current entry, not inherited like a tag. However, if you would like to track the value of this property with a tag for better visibility, customize the option org-track-ordered-property-with-tag.

C-u C-u C-u C-c C-t

Change TODO state, circumventing any state blocking.

If you set the option org-agenda-dim-blocked-tasks, TODO entries that cannot be closed because of such dependencies will be shown in a dimmed font or even made invisible in agenda views (see Agenda views).

You can also block changes of TODO states by looking at checkboxes (see Checkboxes). If you set the option org-enforce-todo-checkbox-dependencies, an entry that has unchecked checkboxes will be blocked from switching to DONE.

If you need more complex dependency structures, for example dependencies between entries in different trees or files, check out the contributed module org-depend.el.

5.3 Progress logging

Org mode can automatically record a timestamp and possibly a note when you mark a TODO item as DONE, or even each time you change the state of a TODO item. This system is highly configurable; settings can be on a per-keyword basis and can be localized to a file or even a subtree. For information on how to clock working time for a task, see Clocking work time.

5.3.1 Closing items

The most basic logging is to keep track of when a certain TODO item was finished. This is achieved with⁴⁷

(setq org-log-done 'time)

Then each time you turn an entry from a TODO (not-done) state into any of the DONE states, a line ‘CLOSED: [timestamp]’ will be inserted just after the headline. If you turn the entry back into a TODO item through further state cycling, that line will be removed again. If you turn the entry back to a non-TODO state (by pressing C-c C-t SPC for example), that line will also be removed, unless you set org-closed-keep-when-no-todo to non-nil. If you want to record a note along with the timestamp, use⁴⁸

(setq org-log-done 'note)

You will then be prompted for a note, and that note will be stored below the entry with a ‘Closing Note’ heading.

5.3.2 Tracking TODO state changes

When TODO keywords are used as workflow states (see Workflow states), you might want to keep track of when a state change occurred and maybe take a note about this change. You can either record just a timestamp, or a time-stamped note for a change. These records will be inserted after the headline as an itemized list, newest first⁴⁹. When taking a lot of notes, you might want to get the notes out of the way into a drawer (see Drawers). Customize org-log-into-drawer to get this behavior—the recommended drawer for this is called LOGBOOK⁵⁰. You can also overrule the setting of this variable for a subtree by setting a LOG_INTO_DRAWER property.

Since it is normally too much to record a note for every state, Org mode expects configuration on a per-keyword basis for this. This is achieved by adding special markers ‘!’ (for a timestamp) or ‘@’ (for a note with timestamp) in parentheses after each keyword. For example, with the setting

(setq org-todo-keywords
  '((sequence "TODO(t)" "WAIT(w@/!)" "|" "DONE(d!)" "CANCELED(c@)")))

To record a timestamp without a note for TODO keywords configured with ‘@’, just type C-c C-c to enter a blank note when prompted.

You not only define global TODO keywords and fast access keys, but also request that a time is recorded when the entry is set to DONE⁵¹, and that a note is recorded when switching to WAIT or CANCELED. The setting for WAIT is even more special: the ‘!’ after the slash means that in addition to the note taken when entering the state, a timestamp should be recorded when leaving the WAIT state, if and only if the target state does not configure logging for entering it. So it has no effect when switching from WAIT to DONE, because DONE is configured to record a timestamp only. But when switching from WAIT back to TODO, the ‘/!’ in the WAIT setting now triggers a timestamp even though TODO has no logging configured.

You can use the exact same syntax for setting logging preferences local to a buffer:

#+TODO: TODO(t) WAIT(w@/!) | DONE(d!) CANCELED(c@)

In order to define logging settings that are local to a subtree or a single item, define a LOGGING property in this entry. Any non-empty LOGGING property resets all logging settings to nil. You may then turn on logging for this specific tree using #+STARTUP keywords like lognotedone or logrepeat, as well as adding state specific settings like TODO(!). For example

* TODO Log each state with only a time
  :PROPERTIES:
  :LOGGING: TODO(!) WAIT(!) DONE(!) CANCELED(!)
  :END:
* TODO Only log when switching to WAIT, and when repeating
  :PROPERTIES:
  :LOGGING: WAIT(@) logrepeat
  :END:
* TODO No logging at all
  :PROPERTIES:
  :LOGGING: nil
  :END:

5.3.3 Tracking your habits

Org has the ability to track the consistency of a special category of TODOs, called “habits”. A habit has the following properties:

1. You have enabled the habits module by customizing org-modules.
2. The habit is a TODO item, with a TODO keyword representing an open state.
3. The property STYLE is set to the value habit.
4. The TODO has a scheduled date, usually with a .+ style repeat interval. A ++ style may be appropriate for habits with time constraints, e.g., must be done on weekends, or a + style for an unusual habit that can have a backlog, e.g., weekly reports.
5. The TODO may also have minimum and maximum ranges specified by using the syntax ‘.+2d/3d’, which says that you want to do the task at least every three days, but at most every two days.
6. You must also have state logging for the DONE state enabled (see Tracking TODO state changes), in order for historical data to be represented in the consistency graph. If it is not enabled it is not an error, but the consistency graphs will be largely meaningless.

To give you an idea of what the above rules look like in action, here’s an actual habit with some history:

** TODO Shave
   SCHEDULED: <2009-10-17 Sat .+2d/4d>
   :PROPERTIES:
   :STYLE:    habit
   :LAST_REPEAT: [2009-10-19 Mon 00:36]
   :END:
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-10-15 Thu]
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-10-12 Mon]
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-10-10 Sat]
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-10-04 Sun]
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-10-02 Fri]
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-09-29 Tue]
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-09-25 Fri]
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-09-19 Sat]
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-09-16 Wed]
   - State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2009-09-12 Sat]

What this habit says is: I want to shave at most every 2 days (given by the SCHEDULED date and repeat interval) and at least every 4 days. If today is the 15th, then the habit first appears in the agenda on Oct 17, after the minimum of 2 days has elapsed, and will appear overdue on Oct 19, after four days have elapsed.

What’s really useful about habits is that they are displayed along with a consistency graph, to show how consistent you’ve been at getting that task done in the past. This graph shows every day that the task was done over the past three weeks, with colors for each day. The colors used are:

Blue

If the task wasn’t to be done yet on that day.

Green

If the task could have been done on that day.

Yellow

If the task was going to be overdue the next day.

Red

If the task was overdue on that day.

In addition to coloring each day, the day is also marked with an asterisk if the task was actually done that day, and an exclamation mark to show where the current day falls in the graph.

There are several configuration variables that can be used to change the way habits are displayed in the agenda.

org-habit-graph-column

The buffer column at which the consistency graph should be drawn. This will overwrite any text in that column, so it is a good idea to keep your habits’ titles brief and to the point.

org-habit-preceding-days

The amount of history, in days before today, to appear in consistency graphs.

org-habit-following-days

The number of days after today that will appear in consistency graphs.

org-habit-show-habits-only-for-today

If non-nil, only show habits in today’s agenda view. This is set to true by default.

Lastly, pressing K in the agenda buffer will cause habits to temporarily be disabled and they won’t appear at all. Press K again to bring them back. They are also subject to tag filtering, if you have habits which should only be done in certain contexts, for example.

5.4 Priorities

If you use Org mode extensively, you may end up with enough TODO items that it starts to make sense to prioritize them. Prioritizing can be done by placing a priority cookie into the headline of a TODO item, like this

*** TODO [#A] Write letter to Sam Fortune

By default, Org mode supports three priorities: ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. ‘A’ is the highest priority. An entry without a cookie is treated just like priority ‘B’. Priorities make a difference only for sorting in the agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda); outside the agenda, they have no inherent meaning to Org mode. The cookies can be highlighted with special faces by customizing org-priority-faces.

Priorities can be attached to any outline node; they do not need to be TODO items.

C-c ,

Set the priority of the current headline (org-priority). The command prompts for a priority character ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’. When you press SPC instead, the priority cookie is removed from the headline. The priorities can also be changed “remotely” from the agenda buffer with the , command (see Agenda commands).

S-UP     (org-priority-up)

S-DOWN     (org-priority-down)

Increase/decrease priority of current headline⁵². Note that these keys are also used to modify timestamps (see Creating timestamps). See also Conflicts, for a discussion of the interaction with shift-selection-mode.

You can change the range of allowed priorities by setting the options org-highest-priority, org-lowest-priority, and org-default-priority. For an individual buffer, you may set these values (highest, lowest, default) like this (please make sure that the highest priority is earlier in the alphabet than the lowest priority):

#+PRIORITIES: A C B

5.5 Breaking tasks down into subtasks

It is often advisable to break down large tasks into smaller, manageable subtasks. You can do this by creating an outline tree below a TODO item, with detailed subtasks on the tree⁵³. To keep the overview over the fraction of subtasks that are already completed, insert either ‘[/]’ or ‘[%]’ anywhere in the headline. These cookies will be updated each time the TODO status of a child changes, or when pressing C-c C-c on the cookie. For example:

* Organize Party [33%]
** TODO Call people [1/2]
*** TODO Peter
*** DONE Sarah
** TODO Buy food
** DONE Talk to neighbor

If a heading has both checkboxes and TODO children below it, the meaning of the statistics cookie become ambiguous. Set the property COOKIE_DATA to either ‘checkbox’ or ‘todo’ to resolve this issue.

If you would like to have the statistics cookie count any TODO entries in the subtree (not just direct children), configure org-hierarchical-todo-statistics. To do this for a single subtree, include the word ‘recursive’ into the value of the COOKIE_DATA property.

* Parent capturing statistics [2/20]
  :PROPERTIES:
  :COOKIE_DATA: todo recursive
  :END:

If you would like a TODO entry to automatically change to DONE when all children are done, you can use the following setup:

(defun org-summary-todo (n-done n-not-done)
  "Switch entry to DONE when all subentries are done, to TODO otherwise."
  (let (org-log-done org-log-states)   ; turn off logging
    (org-todo (if (= n-not-done 0) "DONE" "TODO"))))

(add-hook 'org-after-todo-statistics-hook 'org-summary-todo)

Another possibility is the use of checkboxes to identify (a hierarchy of) a large number of subtasks (see Checkboxes).

5.6 Checkboxes

Every item in a plain list⁵⁴ (see Plain lists) can be made into a checkbox by starting it with the string ‘[ ]’. This feature is similar to TODO items (see TODO items), but is more lightweight. Checkboxes are not included in the global TODO list, so they are often great to split a task into a number of simple steps. Or you can use them in a shopping list. To toggle a checkbox, use C-c C-c, or use the mouse (thanks to Piotr Zielinski’s org-mouse.el).

Here is an example of a checkbox list.

* TODO Organize party [2/4]
  - [-] call people [1/3]
    - [ ] Peter
    - [X] Sarah
    - [ ] Sam
  - [X] order food
  - [ ] think about what music to play
  - [X] talk to the neighbors

Checkboxes work hierarchically, so if a checkbox item has children that are checkboxes, toggling one of the children checkboxes will make the parent checkbox reflect if none, some, or all of the children are checked.

The ‘[2/4]’ and ‘[1/3]’ in the first and second line are cookies indicating how many checkboxes present in this entry have been checked off, and the total number of checkboxes present. This can give you an idea on how many checkboxes remain, even without opening a folded entry. The cookies can be placed into a headline or into (the first line of) a plain list item. Each cookie covers checkboxes of direct children structurally below the headline/item on which the cookie appears⁵⁵. You have to insert the cookie yourself by typing either ‘[/]’ or ‘[%]’. With ‘[/]’ you get an ‘n out of m’ result, as in the examples above. With ‘[%]’ you get information about the percentage of checkboxes checked (in the above example, this would be ‘[50%]’ and ‘[33%]’, respectively). In a headline, a cookie can count either checkboxes below the heading or TODO states of children, and it will display whatever was changed last. Set the property COOKIE_DATA to either ‘checkbox’ or ‘todo’ to resolve this issue.

If the current outline node has an ORDERED property, checkboxes must be checked off in sequence, and an error will be thrown if you try to check off a box while there are unchecked boxes above it.

The following commands work with checkboxes:

C-c C-c     (org-toggle-checkbox)

Toggle checkbox status or (with prefix arg) checkbox presence at point. With a single prefix argument, add an empty checkbox or remove the current one⁵⁶. With a double prefix argument, set it to ‘[-]’, which is considered to be an intermediate state.

C-c C-x C-b     (org-toggle-checkbox)

Toggle checkbox status or (with prefix arg) checkbox presence at point. With double prefix argument, set it to ‘[-]’, which is considered to be an intermediate state.

• - If there is an active region, toggle the first checkbox in the region and set all remaining boxes to the same status as the first. With a prefix arg, add or remove the checkbox for all items in the region.
• - If the cursor is in a headline, toggle the state of the first checkbox in the region between this headline and the next—so not the entire subtree—and propagate this new state to all other checkboxes in the same area.
• - If there is no active region, just toggle the checkbox at point.

M-S-RET     (org-insert-todo-heading)

Insert a new item with a checkbox. This works only if the cursor is already in a plain list item (see Plain lists).

C-c C-x o     (org-toggle-ordered-property)

Toggle the ORDERED property of the entry, to toggle if checkboxes must be checked off in sequence. A property is used for this behavior because this should be local to the current entry, not inherited like a tag. However, if you would like to track the value of this property with a tag for better visibility, customize org-track-ordered-property-with-tag.

C-c #     (org-update-statistics-cookies)

Update the statistics cookie in the current outline entry. When called with a C-u prefix, update the entire file. Checkbox statistic cookies are updated automatically if you toggle checkboxes with C-c C-c and make new ones with M-S-RET. TODO statistics cookies update when changing TODO states. If you delete boxes/entries or add/change them by hand, use this command to get things back into sync.

6 Tags

An excellent way to implement labels and contexts for cross-correlating information is to assign tags to headlines. Org mode has extensive support for tags.

Every headline can contain a list of tags; they occur at the end of the headline. Tags are normal words containing letters, numbers, ‘_’, and ‘@’. Tags must be preceded and followed by a single colon, e.g., ‘:work:’. Several tags can be specified, as in ‘:work:urgent:’. Tags will by default be in bold face with the same color as the headline. You may specify special faces for specific tags using the option org-tag-faces, in much the same way as you can for TODO keywords (see Faces for TODO keywords).

6.1 Tag inheritance

Tags make use of the hierarchical structure of outline trees. If a heading has a certain tag, all subheadings will inherit the tag as well. For example, in the list

* Meeting with the French group      :work:
** Summary by Frank                  :boss:notes:
*** TODO Prepare slides for him      :action:

the final heading will have the tags ‘:work:’, ‘:boss:’, ‘:notes:’, and ‘:action:’ even though the final heading is not explicitly marked with all those tags. You can also set tags that all entries in a file should inherit just as if these tags were defined in a hypothetical level zero that surrounds the entire file. Use a line like this⁵⁷:

#+FILETAGS: :Peter:Boss:Secret:

To limit tag inheritance to specific tags, use org-tags-exclude-from-inheritance. To turn it off entirely, use org-use-tag-inheritance.

When a headline matches during a tags search while tag inheritance is turned on, all the sublevels in the same tree will (for a simple match form) match as well⁵⁸. The list of matches may then become very long. If you only want to see the first tags match in a subtree, configure org-tags-match-list-sublevels (not recommended).

Tag inheritance is relevant when the agenda search tries to match a tag, either in the tags or tags-todo agenda types. In other agenda types, org-use-tag-inheritance has no effect. Still, you may want to have your tags correctly set in the agenda, so that tag filtering works fine, with inherited tags. Set org-agenda-use-tag-inheritance to control this: the default value includes all agenda types, but setting this to nil can really speed up agenda generation.

6.2 Setting tags

Tags can simply be typed into the buffer at the end of a headline. After a colon, M-TAB offers completion on tags. There is also a special command for inserting tags:

C-c C-q     (org-set-tags-command)

Enter new tags for the current headline. Org mode will either offer completion or a special single-key interface for setting tags, see below. After pressing RET, the tags will be inserted and aligned to org-tags-column. When called with a C-u prefix, all tags in the current buffer will be aligned to that column, just to make things look nice. TAGS are automatically realigned after promotion, demotion, and TODO state changes (see TODO basics).

C-c C-c     (org-set-tags-command)

When the cursor is in a headline, this does the same as C-c C-q.

Org supports tag insertion based on a list of tags. By default this list is constructed dynamically, containing all tags currently used in the buffer. You may also globally specify a hard list of tags with the variable org-tag-alist. Finally you can set the default tags for a given file with lines like

#+TAGS: @work @home @tennisclub
#+TAGS: laptop car pc sailboat

If you have globally defined your preferred set of tags using the variable org-tag-alist, but would like to use a dynamic tag list in a specific file, add an empty TAGS option line to that file:

#+TAGS:

If you have a preferred set of tags that you would like to use in every file, in addition to those defined on a per-file basis by TAGS option lines, then you may specify a list of tags with the variable org-tag-persistent-alist. You may turn this off on a per-file basis by adding a #+STARTUP option line to that file:

#+STARTUP: noptag

By default Org mode uses the standard minibuffer completion facilities for entering tags. However, it also implements another, quicker, tag selection method called fast tag selection. This allows you to select and deselect tags with just a single key press. For this to work well you should assign unique, case-sensitive, letters to most of your commonly used tags. You can do this globally by configuring the variable org-tag-alist in your Emacs init file. For example, you may find the need to tag many items in different files with ‘:@home:’. In this case you can set something like:

(setq org-tag-alist '(("@work" . ?w) ("@home" . ?h) ("laptop" . ?l)))

If the tag is only relevant to the file you are working on, then you can instead set the TAGS option line as:

#+TAGS: @work(w)  @home(h)  @tennisclub(t)  laptop(l)  pc(p)

The tags interface will show the available tags in a splash window. If you want to start a new line after a specific tag, insert ‘\n’ into the tag list

#+TAGS: @work(w)  @home(h)  @tennisclub(t) \n laptop(l)  pc(p)

or write them in two lines:

#+TAGS: @work(w)  @home(h)  @tennisclub(t)
#+TAGS: laptop(l)  pc(p)

You can also group together tags that are mutually exclusive by using braces, as in:

#+TAGS: { @work(w)  @home(h)  @tennisclub(t) }  laptop(l)  pc(p)

you indicate that at most one of ‘@work’, ‘@home’, and ‘@tennisclub’ should be selected. Multiple such groups are allowed.

Don’t forget to press C-c C-c with the cursor in one of these lines to activate any changes.

To set these mutually exclusive groups in the variable org-tag-alist, you must use the dummy tags :startgroup and :endgroup instead of the braces. Similarly, you can use :newline to indicate a line break. The previous example would be set globally by the following configuration:

(setq org-tag-alist '((:startgroup . nil)
                      ("@work" . ?w) ("@home" . ?h)
                      ("@tennisclub" . ?t)
                      (:endgroup . nil)
                      ("laptop" . ?l) ("pc" . ?p)))

If at least one tag has a selection key then pressing C-c C-c will automatically present you with a special interface, listing inherited tags, the tags of the current headline, and a list of all valid tags with corresponding keys⁵⁹.

Pressing keys assigned to tags will add or remove them from the list of tags in the current line. Selecting a tag in a group of mutually exclusive tags will turn off any other tags from that group.

In this interface, you can also use the following special keys:

TAB

Enter a tag in the minibuffer, even if the tag is not in the predefined list. You will be able to complete on all tags present in the buffer. You can also add several tags: just separate them with a comma.

SPC

Clear all tags for this line.

RET

Accept the modified set.

C-g

Abort without installing changes.

q

If q is not assigned to a tag, it aborts like C-g.

!

Turn off groups of mutually exclusive tags. Use this to (as an exception) assign several tags from such a group.

C-c

Toggle auto-exit after the next change (see below). If you are using expert mode, the first C-c will display the selection window.

This method lets you assign tags to a headline with very few keys. With the above setup, you could clear the current tags and set ‘@home’, ‘laptop’ and ‘pc’ tags with just the following keys: C-c C-c SPC h l p RET. Switching from ‘@home’ to ‘@work’ would be done with C-c C-c w RET or alternatively with C-c C-c C-c w. Adding the non-predefined tag ‘Sarah’ could be done with C-c C-c TAB S a r a h RET RET.

If you find that most of the time you need only a single key press to modify your list of tags, set org-fast-tag-selection-single-key. Then you no longer have to press RET to exit fast tag selection—it will immediately exit after the first change. If you then occasionally need more keys, press C-c to turn off auto-exit for the current tag selection process (in effect: start selection with C-c C-c C-c instead of C-c C-c). If you set the variable to the value expert, the special window is not even shown for single-key tag selection, it comes up only when you press an extra C-c.

6.3 Tag hierarchy

Tags can be defined in hierarchies. A tag can be defined as a group tag for a set of other tags. The group tag can be seen as the “broader term” for its set of tags. Defining multiple group tags and nesting them creates a tag hierarchy.

One use-case is to create a taxonomy of terms (tags) that can be used to classify nodes in a document or set of documents.

When you search for a group tag, it will return matches for all members in the group and its subgroups. In an agenda view, filtering by a group tag will display or hide headlines tagged with at least one of the members of the group or any of its subgroups. This makes tag searches and filters even more flexible.

You can set group tags by using brackets and inserting a colon between the group tag and its related tags—beware that all whitespaces are mandatory so that Org can parse this line correctly:

#+TAGS: [ GTD : Control Persp ]

In this example, ‘GTD’ is the group tag and it is related to two other tags: ‘Control’, ‘Persp’. Defining ‘Control’ and ‘Persp’ as group tags creates a hierarchy of tags:

#+TAGS: [ Control : Context Task ]
#+TAGS: [ Persp : Vision Goal AOF Project ]

That can conceptually be seen as a hierarchy of tags:

- GTD
  - Persp
    - Vision
    - Goal
    - AOF
    - Project
  - Control
    - Context
    - Task

You can use the :startgrouptag, :grouptags and :endgrouptag keyword directly when setting org-tag-alist directly:

(setq org-tag-alist '((:startgrouptag)
                      ("GTD")
                      (:grouptags)
                      ("Control")
                      ("Persp")
                      (:endgrouptag)
                      (:startgrouptag)
                      ("Control")
                      (:grouptags)
                      ("Context")
                      ("Task")
                      (:endgrouptag)))

The tags in a group can be mutually exclusive if using the same group syntax as is used for grouping mutually exclusive tags together; using curly brackets.

#+TAGS: { Context : @Home @Work @Call }

When setting org-tag-alist you can use :startgroup & :endgroup instead of :startgrouptag & :endgrouptag to make the tags mutually exclusive.

Furthermore, the members of a group tag can also be regular expressions, creating the possibility of a more dynamic and rule-based tag structure. The regular expressions in the group must be specified within { }. Here is an expanded example:

#+TAGS: [ Vision : {V@.+} ]
#+TAGS: [ Goal : {G@.+} ]
#+TAGS: [ AOF : {AOF@.+} ]
#+TAGS: [ Project : {P@.+} ]

Searching for the tag ‘Project’ will now list all tags also including regular expression matches for ‘P@.+’, and similarly for tag searches on ‘Vision’, ‘Goal’ and ‘AOF’. For example, this would work well for a project tagged with a common project-identifier, e.g. ‘P@2014_OrgTags’.

If you want to ignore group tags temporarily, toggle group tags support with org-toggle-tags-groups, bound to C-c C-x q. If you want to disable tag groups completely, set org-group-tags to nil.

6.4 Tag searches

Once a system of tags has been set up, it can be used to collect related information into special lists.

C-c / m  or  C-c \     (org-match-sparse-tree)

Create a sparse tree with all headlines matching a tags/property/TODO search. With a C-u prefix argument, ignore headlines that are not a TODO line. See Matching tags and properties.

C-c a m     (org-tags-view)

Create a global list of tag matches from all agenda files. See Matching tags and properties.

C-c a M     (org-tags-view)

Create a global list of tag matches from all agenda files, but check only TODO items and force checking subitems (see the option org-tags-match-list-sublevels).

These commands all prompt for a match string which allows basic Boolean logic like ‘+boss+urgent-project1’, to find entries with tags ‘boss’ and ‘urgent’, but not ‘project1’, or ‘Kathy|Sally’ to find entries tagged as ‘Kathy’ or ‘Sally’. The full syntax of the search string is rich and allows also matching against TODO keywords, entry levels and properties. For a complete description with many examples, see Matching tags and properties.

7 Properties and columns

A property is a key-value pair associated with an entry. Properties can be set so they are associated with a single entry, with every entry in a tree, or with every entry in an Org mode file.

There are two main applications for properties in Org mode. First, properties are like tags, but with a value. Imagine maintaining a file where you document bugs and plan releases for a piece of software. Instead of using tags like :release_1:, :release_2:, you can use a property, say :Release:, that in different subtrees has different values, such as 1.0 or 2.0. Second, you can use properties to implement (very basic) database capabilities in an Org buffer. Imagine keeping track of your music CDs, where properties could be things such as the album, artist, date of release, number of tracks, and so on.

Properties can be conveniently edited and viewed in column view (see Column view).

7.1 Property syntax

Properties are key-value pairs. When they are associated with a single entry or with a tree they need to be inserted into a special drawer (see Drawers) with the name PROPERTIES, which has to be located right below a headline, and its planning line (see Deadlines and scheduling) when applicable. Each property is specified on a single line, with the key (surrounded by colons) first, and the value after it. Keys are case-insensitive. Here is an example:

* CD collection
** Classic
*** Goldberg Variations
    :PROPERTIES:
    :Title:     Goldberg Variations
    :Composer:  J.S. Bach
    :Artist:    Glen Gould
    :Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon
    :NDisks:    1
    :END:

Depending on the value of org-use-property-inheritance, a property set this way will either be associated with a single entry, or the subtree defined by the entry, see Property inheritance.

You may define the allowed values for a particular property ‘:Xyz:’ by setting a property ‘:Xyz_ALL:’. This special property is inherited, so if you set it in a level 1 entry, it will apply to the entire tree. When allowed values are defined, setting the corresponding property becomes easier and is less prone to typing errors. For the example with the CD collection, we can predefine publishers and the number of disks in a box like this:

* CD collection
  :PROPERTIES:
  :NDisks_ALL:  1 2 3 4
  :Publisher_ALL: "Deutsche Grammophon" Philips EMI
  :END:

If you want to set properties that can be inherited by any entry in a file, use a line like

#+PROPERTY: NDisks_ALL 1 2 3 4

Contrary to properties set from a special drawer, you have to refresh the buffer with C-c C-c to activate this change.

If you want to add to the value of an existing property, append a + to the property name. The following results in the property var having the value “foo=1 bar=2”.

#+PROPERTY: var  foo=1
#+PROPERTY: var+ bar=2

It is also possible to add to the values of inherited properties. The following results in the genres property having the value “Classic Baroque” under the Goldberg Variations subtree.

* CD collection
** Classic
    :PROPERTIES:
    :GENRES: Classic
    :END:
*** Goldberg Variations
    :PROPERTIES:
    :Title:     Goldberg Variations
    :Composer:  J.S. Bach
    :Artist:    Glen Gould
    :Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon
    :NDisks:    1
    :GENRES+:   Baroque
    :END:

Note that a property can only have one entry per Drawer.

Property values set with the global variable org-global-properties can be inherited by all entries in all Org files.

The following commands help to work with properties:

M-TAB     (pcomplete)

After an initial colon in a line, complete property keys. All keys used in the current file will be offered as possible completions.

C-c C-x p     (org-set-property)

Set a property. This prompts for a property name and a value. If necessary, the property drawer is created as well.

C-u M-x org-insert-drawer RET

Insert a property drawer into the current entry. The drawer will be inserted early in the entry, but after the lines with planning information like deadlines.

C-c C-c     (org-property-action)

With the cursor in a property drawer, this executes property commands.

C-c C-c s     (org-set-property)

Set a property in the current entry. Both the property and the value can be inserted using completion.

S-RIGHT     (org-property-next-allowed-value)

S-LEFT     (org-property-previous-allowed-value)

Switch property at point to the next/previous allowed value.

C-c C-c d     (org-delete-property)

Remove a property from the current entry.

C-c C-c D     (org-delete-property-globally)

Globally remove a property, from all entries in the current file.

C-c C-c c     (org-compute-property-at-point)

Compute the property at point, using the operator and scope from the nearest column format definition.

7.2 Special properties

Special properties provide an alternative access method to Org mode features, like the TODO state or the priority of an entry, discussed in the previous chapters. This interface exists so that you can include these states in a column view (see Column view), or to use them in queries. The following property names are special and should not be used as keys in the properties drawer:

ALLTAGS      All tags, including inherited ones.
BLOCKED      "t" if task is currently blocked by children or siblings.
CLOCKSUM     The sum of CLOCK intervals in the subtree.  org-clock-sum
             must be run first to compute the values in the current buffer.
CLOCKSUM_T   The sum of CLOCK intervals in the subtree for today.
             org-clock-sum-today must be run first to compute the
             values in the current buffer.
CLOSED       When was this entry closed?
DEADLINE     The deadline time string, without the angular brackets.
FILE         The filename the entry is located in.
ITEM         The headline of the entry.
PRIORITY     The priority of the entry, a string with a single letter.
SCHEDULED    The scheduling timestamp, without the angular brackets.
TAGS         The tags defined directly in the headline.
TIMESTAMP    The first keyword-less timestamp in the entry.
TIMESTAMP_IA The first inactive timestamp in the entry.
TODO         The TODO keyword of the entry.

7.3 Property searches

To create sparse trees and special lists with selection based on properties, the same commands are used as for tag searches (see Tag searches).

C-c / m  or  C-c \     (org-match-sparse-tree)

Create a sparse tree with all matching entries. With a C-u prefix argument, ignore headlines that are not a TODO line.

C-c a m     (org-tags-view)

Create a global list of tag/property matches from all agenda files. See Matching tags and properties.

C-c a M     (org-tags-view)

Create a global list of tag matches from all agenda files, but check only TODO items and force checking of subitems (see the option org-tags-match-list-sublevels).

The syntax for the search string is described in Matching tags and properties.

There is also a special command for creating sparse trees based on a single property:

C-c / p

Create a sparse tree based on the value of a property. This first prompts for the name of a property, and then for a value. A sparse tree is created with all entries that define this property with the given value. If you enclose the value in curly braces, it is interpreted as a regular expression and matched against the property values.

7.4 Property Inheritance

The outline structure of Org mode documents lends itself to an inheritance model of properties: if the parent in a tree has a certain property, the children can inherit this property. Org mode does not turn this on by default, because it can slow down property searches significantly and is often not needed. However, if you find inheritance useful, you can turn it on by setting the variable org-use-property-inheritance. It may be set to t to make all properties inherited from the parent, to a list of properties that should be inherited, or to a regular expression that matches inherited properties. If a property has the value nil, this is interpreted as an explicit undefine of the property, so that inheritance search will stop at this value and return nil.

Org mode has a few properties for which inheritance is hard-coded, at least for the special applications for which they are used:

COLUMNS

The :COLUMNS: property defines the format of column view (see Column view). It is inherited in the sense that the level where a :COLUMNS: property is defined is used as the starting point for a column view table, independently of the location in the subtree from where columns view is turned on.

CATEGORY

For agenda view, a category set through a :CATEGORY: property applies to the entire subtree.

ARCHIVE

For archiving, the :ARCHIVE: property may define the archive location for the entire subtree (see Moving subtrees).

LOGGING

The LOGGING property may define logging settings for an entry or a subtree (see Tracking TODO state changes).

7.5 Column view

A great way to view and edit properties in an outline tree is column view. In column view, each outline node is turned into a table row. Columns in this table provide access to properties of the entries. Org mode implements columns by overlaying a tabular structure over the headline of each item. While the headlines have been turned into a table row, you can still change the visibility of the outline tree. For example, you get a compact table by switching to CONTENTS view (S-TAB S-TAB, or simply c while column view is active), but you can still open, read, and edit the entry below each headline. Or, you can switch to column view after executing a sparse tree command and in this way get a table only for the selected items. Column view also works in agenda buffers (see Agenda views) where queries have collected selected items, possibly from a number of files.

7.5.1 Defining columns

Setting up a column view first requires defining the columns. This is done by defining a column format line.

7.5.1.1 Scope of column definitions

To define a column format for an entire file, use a line like

#+COLUMNS: %25ITEM %TAGS %PRIORITY %TODO

To specify a format that only applies to a specific tree, add a :COLUMNS: property to the top node of that tree, for example:

** Top node for columns view
   :PROPERTIES:
   :COLUMNS: %25ITEM %TAGS %PRIORITY %TODO
   :END:

If a :COLUMNS: property is present in an entry, it defines columns for the entry itself, and for the entire subtree below it. Since the column definition is part of the hierarchical structure of the document, you can define columns on level 1 that are general enough for all sublevels, and more specific columns further down, when you edit a deeper part of the tree.

7.5.1.2 Column attributes

A column definition sets the attributes of a column. The general definition looks like this:

 %[width]property[(title)][{summary-type}]