The Org Manual

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 http://orgmode.org.

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

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.

Since Emacs 22.2, files with the .org extension use Org mode by default. If you are using an earlier version of Emacs, add this line to your .emacs file:

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.org\\'" . org-mode))

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-iswitchb 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-iswitchb)

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 (zmacs-regions in XEmacs) turned on. In Emacs 23 this is the default, in Emacs 22 you need to do this yourself with

(transient-mark-mode 1)

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.

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 .emacs. 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 (expand-file-name "/path/to/org-mode/lisp"))
(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "/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.

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.

Headlines define the structure of an outline tree. The headlines in Org start with one or more stars, on the left margin^{4 , 5}. 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.

The following commands jump to other headlines in the buffer.

• C-c C-n (outline-next-visible-heading)

  Next heading.

• C-c C-p (outline-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.

• M-RET (org-insert-heading)

  Insert a new heading/item with the same level as the one at point.

  If the cursor is in a plain list item, a new item is created (see Plain lists). To prevent this behavior in lists, call the command with one prefix argument. 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.

  If the command is used at the beginning of a line, and if there is a heading or an item at point, the new heading/item is created before the current line. If the command is used at the end of a folded subtree (i.e., behind the ellipses at the end of a headline), then a headline will be inserted after the end of the subtree.

  Calling this command with C-u C-u will unconditionally respect the headline's content and create a new item at the end of the parent subtree.

  If point is at the beginning of a normal line, turn this line into a heading.

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

  Just like */M-RET*/, except when adding a new heading below the current heading, the new heading is placed after the body instead of before it. This command works from anywhere in the entry.

• 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-S-up (org-move-subtree-up)

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

• M-S-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.

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 it¹⁰. 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 (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 command¹¹, 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 document¹². Or you can use C-c C-e C-v to export only the visible part of the document and print the resulting file.

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 ‘*'¹³ as bullets.
• Ordered list items start with a numeral followed by either a period or a right parenthesis¹⁴, such as ‘1.' or ‘1)'¹⁵. If you want a list to start with a different value (e.g., 20), start the text of the item with [@20] ¹⁶. 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 lines¹⁷. 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 Austin :: 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 correctly¹⁸, 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 TAB 's 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 item¹⁹. 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 list²⁰, 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/down²¹ (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, selected text will be changed into an item. With a prefix argument, all lines will be converted to list items. 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.

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-TAB.

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.

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

Org mode supports the creation of footnotes. In contrast to the footnote.el package, Org mode's footnotes are designed for work on a larger document, not only for one-off documents like emails.

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. For example:

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

Org mode extends the number-based syntax to named footnotes and optional inline definition. Using plain numbers as markers (as footnote.el does) is supported for backward compatibility, but not encouraged because of possible conflicts with LaTeX snippets (see Embedded LaTeX). Here are the valid references:

[1]

A plain numeric footnote marker. Compatible with footnote.el, but not recommended because something like [1] could easily be part of a code snippet.

[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-inline ²², 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.  This is
      meant to be the final step before finishing a document (e.g., sending
      off an email).
  d   Delete the footnote at point, and all definitions of and references
      to it.
  

  Depending on the variable =org-footnote-auto-adjust=²³, 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 '/

  Edit the footnote definition corresponding to the reference at point in a seperate window. This may be useful if editing footnotes in a narrowed buffer. The window can be closed by pressing /C-c '/.

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.

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.

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 separator²⁴. 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 options org-enable-table-editor and org-table-auto-blank-field.

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 set²⁵ 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 column to the left, you can use ‘<r>', ‘<c>'²⁶ 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.

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 column, 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) |
|----+-----+-----+-----+---------+------------|
| /  | <   |     |     | <       |            |

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.

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

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

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.

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 tags³³.

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 object³⁴. 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.

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:/myself@some.where:papers/last.pdf   file, path on remote machine
/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(35)
file:projects.org::*task title heading search in Org
file(36)
file+sys:/path/to/file                    open via OS, like double-click
file+emacs:/path/to/file                  force opening by Emacs
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:

[[http://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.

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 description³⁵.

    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 link³⁶. 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: 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 link³⁷. 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 buffer³⁸, 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 ‘http:' or ‘ftp:', 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 types³⁹ 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-2 will open the link just as C-c C-o would. Under Emacs 22 and later, mouse-1 will also follow a link.

• mouse-3

  Like mouse-2, but force file links to be opened with Emacs, and internal links to be displayed in another window⁴⁰.

• 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-images ⁴¹.

• 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)))
  

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)

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, it will simply be appended to the string 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 org-PREFIX-complete-link 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.

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 double⁴² 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.

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.

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 the timeline and 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.

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).

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.

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 timeline and agenda buffer with the , command (see Agenda commands).

(no term)

S-up (org-priority-up)

S-down (org-priority-down)

Increase/decrease priority of current headline⁵⁴. 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

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 tree⁵⁵. 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).

Every item in a plain list⁵⁶ (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 appears⁵⁷. 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 one⁵⁸. 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 checkboxes in the region between this headline and the next (so not the entire subtree).
  • 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.

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 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 this⁵⁹:

#+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 well⁶⁰. 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.

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 letters to most of your commonly used tags. You can do this globally by configuring the variable org-tag-alist in your .emacs 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 keys⁶¹. In this interface, you can use the following keys:

a-z…

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.

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.

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 subgroup. 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 an 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 expression, creating the possibility of more dynamic and rule-based tag-structure. The regular expressions in the group must be marked up within { }. Example use, to expand on the example given above:

#+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@.+'. Similar for tag-searches on ‘Vision', ‘Goal' and ‘AOF'. This can be good for example if tags for a certain project is tagged with a common project-identifier, i.e. ‘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.

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 which are tagged, like ‘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.

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-insensitives. 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.

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:

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.

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).

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.

There is a full API for accessing and changing properties. This API can be used by Emacs Lisp programs to work with properties and to implement features based on them. For more information see Using the property API.

A timestamp is a specification of a date (possibly with a time or a range of times) in a special format, either ‘<2003-09-16 Tue>'⁶³ or ‘<2003-09-16 Tue 09:39>' or ‘<2003-09-16 mar 12:00>–<2003-09-16 mar 12:30>'⁶⁴. A timestamp can appear anywhere in the headline or body of an Org tree entry. Its presence causes entries to be shown on specific dates in the agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda). We distinguish:

• Plain timestamp; Event; Appointment

  A simple timestamp just assigns a date/time to an item. This is just like writing down an appointment or event in a paper agenda. In the timeline and agenda displays, the headline of an entry associated with a plain timestamp will be shown exactly on that date.

  * Meet Peter at the movies
    <2006-11-01 Wed 19:15>
  * Discussion on climate change
    <2006-11-02 Thu 20:00-22:00>
  

• Timestamp with repeater interval

  A timestamp may contain a repeater interval, indicating that it applies not only on the given date, but again and again after a certain interval of N days (d), weeks (w), months (m), or years (y). The following will show up in the agenda every Wednesday:

  * Pick up Sam at school
    <2007-05-16 Wed 12:30 +1w>
  

• Diary-style sexp entries

  For more complex date specifications, Org mode supports using the special sexp diary entries implemented in the Emacs calendar/diary package⁶⁵. For example with optional time

  * 22:00-23:00 The nerd meeting on every 2nd Thursday of the month
    <%%(diary-float t 4 2)>
  

• Time/Date range

  Two timestamps connected by ‘–' denote a range. The headline will be shown on the first and last day of the range, and on any dates that are displayed and fall in the range. Here is an example:

  ** Meeting in Amsterdam
     <2004-08-23 Mon>--<2004-08-26 Thu>
  

• Inactive timestamp

  Just like a plain timestamp, but with square brackets instead of angular ones. These timestamps are inactive in the sense that they do not trigger an entry to show up in the agenda.

  * Gillian comes late for the fifth time
    [2006-11-01 Wed]
  

For Org mode to recognize timestamps, they need to be in the specific format. All commands listed below produce timestamps in the correct format.

• C-c . (org-time-stamp)

  Prompt for a date and insert a corresponding timestamp. When the cursor is at an existing timestamp in the buffer, the command is used to modify this timestamp instead of inserting a new one. When this command is used twice in succession, a time range is inserted.

• C-c ! (org-time-stamp-inactive)

  Like C-c ., but insert an inactive timestamp that will not cause an agenda entry.

• C-u C-c .
• C-u C-c !

  Like C-c . and C-c !, but use the alternative format which contains date and time. The default time can be rounded to multiples of 5 minutes, see the option org-time-stamp-rounding-minutes.

• C-c C-c

  Normalize timestamp, insert/fix day name if missing or wrong.

• C-c < (org-date-from-calendar)

  Insert a timestamp corresponding to the cursor date in the Calendar.

• C-c > (org-goto-calendar)

  Access the Emacs calendar for the current date. If there is a timestamp in the current line, go to the corresponding date instead.

• C-c C-o (org-open-at-point)

  Access the agenda for the date given by the timestamp or -range at point (see Weekly/daily agenda).

• S-left (org-timestamp-down-day)
• S-right (org-timestamp-up-day)

  Change date at cursor by one day. These key bindings conflict with shift-selection and related modes (see Conflicts).

• S-up (org-timestamp-up)
• S-down (org-timestamp-down-down)

  Change the item under the cursor in a timestamp. The cursor can be on a year, month, day, hour or minute. When the timestamp contains a time range like ‘15:30-16:30', modifying the first time will also shift the second, shifting the time block with constant length. To change the length, modify the second time. Note that if the cursor is in a headline and not at a timestamp, these same keys modify the priority of an item. (see Priorities). The key bindings also conflict with shift-selection and related modes (see Conflicts).

• C-c C-y (org-evaluate-time-range)

  Evaluate a time range by computing the difference between start and end. With a prefix argument, insert result after the time range (in a table: into the following column).

A timestamp may be preceded by special keywords to facilitate planning:

• DEADLINE

  Meaning: the task (most likely a TODO item, though not necessarily) is supposed to be finished on that date.

  On the deadline date, the task will be listed in the agenda. In addition, the agenda for today will carry a warning about the approaching or missed deadline, starting org-deadline-warning-days before the due date, and continuing until the entry is marked DONE. An example:

  *** TODO write article about the Earth for the Guide
      DEADLINE: <2004-02-29 Sun>
      The editor in charge is [[bbdb:Ford Prefect]]
  

  You can specify a different lead time for warnings for a specific deadline using the following syntax. Here is an example with a warning period of 5 days DEADLINE: <2004-02-29 Sun -5d>. This warning is deactivated if the task gets scheduled and you set org-agenda-skip-deadline-prewarning-if-scheduled to t.

• SCHEDULED

  Meaning: you are planning to start working on that task on the given date.

  The headline will be listed under the given date⁶⁹. In addition, a reminder that the scheduled date has passed will be present in the compilation for today, until the entry is marked DONE, i.e., the task will automatically be forwarded until completed.

  *** TODO Call Trillian for a date on New Years Eve.
      SCHEDULED: <2004-12-25 Sat>
  

  If you want to delay the display of this task in the agenda, use SCHEDULED: <2004-12-25 Sat -2d>: the task is still scheduled on the 25th but will appear two days later. In case the task contains a repeater, the delay is considered to affect all occurrences; if you want the delay to only affect the first scheduled occurrence of the task, use --2d instead. See org-scheduled-delay-days and org-agenda-skip-scheduled-delay-if-deadline for details on how to control this globally or per agenda.

  Important: Scheduling an item in Org mode should not be understood in the same way that we understand scheduling a meeting. Setting a date for a meeting is just a simple appointment, you should mark this entry with a simple plain timestamp, to get this item shown on the date where it applies. This is a frequent misunderstanding by Org users. In Org mode, scheduling means setting a date when you want to start working on an action item.

You may use timestamps with repeaters in scheduling and deadline entries. Org mode will issue early and late warnings based on the assumption that the timestamp represents the nearest instance of the repeater. However, the use of diary sexp entries like <%%(diary-float t 42)> in scheduling and deadline timestamps is limited. Org mode does not know enough about the internals of each sexp function to issue early and late warnings. However, it will show the item on each day where the sexp entry matches.

Org mode allows you to clock the time you spend on specific tasks in a project. When you start working on an item, you can start the clock. When you stop working on that task, or when you mark the task done, the clock is stopped and the corresponding time interval is recorded. It also computes the total time spent on each subtree⁷⁵ of a project. And it remembers a history or tasks recently clocked, so that you can jump quickly between a number of tasks absorbing your time.

To save the clock history across Emacs sessions, use

(setq org-clock-persist 'history)
(org-clock-persistence-insinuate)

When you clock into a new task after resuming Emacs, the incomplete clock⁷⁶ will be found (see Resolving idle time) and you will be prompted about what to do with it.

If you want to plan your work in a very detailed way, or if you need to produce offers with quotations of the estimated work effort, you may want to assign effort estimates to entries. If you are also clocking your work, you may later want to compare the planned effort with the actual working time, a great way to improve planning estimates. Effort estimates are stored in a special property EFFORT. You can set the effort for an entry with the following commands:

• C-c C-x e (org-set-effort)

  Set the effort estimate for the current entry. With a numeric prefix argument, set it to the Nth allowed value (see below). This command is also accessible from the agenda with the e key.

• C-c C-x C-e (org-clock-modify-effort-estimate)

  Modify the effort estimate of the item currently being clocked.

Clearly the best way to work with effort estimates is through column view (see Column view). You should start by setting up discrete values for effort estimates, and a COLUMNS format that displays these values together with clock sums (if you want to clock your time). For a specific buffer you can use

#+PROPERTY: Effort_ALL 0 0:10 0:30 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00
#+COLUMNS: %40ITEM(Task) %17Effort(Estimated Effort){:} %CLOCKSUM

or, even better, you can set up these values globally by customizing the variables org-global-properties and org-columns-default-format. In particular if you want to use this setup also in the agenda, a global setup may be advised.

The way to assign estimates to individual items is then to switch to column mode, and to use S-right and S-left to change the value. The values you enter will immediately be summed up in the hierarchy. In the column next to it, any clocked time will be displayed.

If you switch to column view in the daily/weekly agenda, the effort column will summarize the estimated work effort for each day⁸³, and you can use this to find space in your schedule. To get an overview of the entire part of the day that is committed, you can set the option org-agenda-columns-add-appointments-to-effort-sum. The appointments on a day that take place over a specified time interval will then also be added to the load estimate of the day.

Effort estimates can be used in secondary agenda filtering that is triggered with the / key in the agenda (see Agenda commands). If you have these estimates defined consistently, two or three key presses will narrow down the list to stuff that fits into an available time slot.

Org provides provides two types of timers. There is a relative timer that counts up, which can be useful when taking notes during, for example, a meeting or a video viewing. There is also a countdown timer.

The relative and countdown are started with separate commands.

• C-c C-x 0 (org-timer-start)

  Start or reset the relative timer. By default, the timer is set to 0. When called with a C-u prefix, prompt the user for a starting offset. If there is a timer string at point, this is taken as the default, providing a convenient way to restart taking notes after a break in the process. When called with a double prefix argument C-u C-u, change all timer strings in the active region by a certain amount. This can be used to fix timer strings if the timer was not started at exactly the right moment.

• C-c C-x ; (org-timer-set-timer)

  Start a countdown timer. The user is prompted for a duration. org-timer-default-timer sets the default countdown value. Giving a prefix numeric argument overrides this default value. This command is available as ; in agenda buffers.

Once started, relative and countdown timers are controlled with the same commands.

• C-c C-x . (org-timer)

  Insert the value of the current relative or countdown timer into the buffer. If no timer is running, the relative timer will be started. When called with a prefix argument, the relative timer is restarted.

• C-c C-x - (org-timer-item)

  Insert a description list item with the value of the current relative or countdown timer. With a prefix argument, first reset the relative timer to 0.

• M-RET (org-insert-heading)

  Once the timer list is started, you can also use M-RET to insert new timer items.

• /C-c C-x \ / (org-timer-pause-or-continue)

  Pause the timer, or continue it if it is already paused.

• C-c C-x _ (org-timer-stop)

  Stop the timer. After this, you can only start a new timer, not continue the old one. This command also removes the timer from the mode line.

Capture lets you quickly store notes with little interruption of your work flow. Org's method for capturing new items is heavily inspired by John Wiegley excellent remember.el package. Up to version 6.36, Org used a special setup for remember.el, then replaced it with org-remember.el. As of version 8.0, org-remember.el has been completely replaced by org-capture.el.

If your configuration depends on org-remember.el, you need to update it and use the setup described below. To convert your org-remember-templates, run the command

M-x org-capture-import-remember-templates RET

and then customize the new variable with M-x customize-variable org-capture-templates, check the result, and save the customization.

It is often useful to associate reference material with an outline node/task. Small chunks of plain text can simply be stored in the subtree of a project. Hyperlinks (see Hyperlinks) can establish associations with files that live elsewhere on your computer or in the cloud, like emails or source code files belonging to a project. Another method is attachments, which are files located in a directory belonging to an outline node. Org uses directories named by the unique ID of each entry. These directories are located in the data directory which lives in the same directory where your Org file lives⁸⁹. If you initialize this directory with git init, Org will automatically commit changes when it sees them. The attachment system has been contributed to Org by John Wiegley.

In cases where it seems better to do so, you can also attach a directory of your choice to an entry. You can also make children inherit the attachment directory from a parent, so that an entire subtree uses the same attached directory.

The following commands deal with attachments:

• C-c C-a (org-attach)

  The dispatcher for commands related to the attachment system. After these keys, a list of commands is displayed and you must press an additional key to select a command:

  • a (org-attach-attach)

    Select a file and move it into the task's attachment directory. The file will be copied, moved, or linked, depending on org-attach-method. Note that hard links are not supported on all systems.

  • c/m/l

    Attach a file using the copy/move/link method. Note that hard links are not supported on all systems.

  • n (org-attach-new)

    Create a new attachment as an Emacs buffer.

  • z (org-attach-sync)

    Synchronize the current task with its attachment directory, in case you added attachments yourself.

  • o (org-attach-open)

    Open current task's attachment. If there is more than one, prompt for a file name first. Opening will follow the rules set by org-file-apps. For more details, see the information on following hyperlinks (see Handling links).

  • O (org-attach-open-in-emacs)

    Also open the attachment, but force opening the file in Emacs.

  • f (org-attach-reveal)

    Open the current task's attachment directory.

  • F (org-attach-reveal-in-emacs)

    Also open the directory, but force using dired in Emacs.

  • d (org-attach-delete-one)

    Select and delete a single attachment.

  • D (org-attach-delete-all)

    Delete all of a task's attachments. A safer way is to open the directory in dired and delete from there.

  • s (org-attach-set-directory)

    Set a specific directory as the entry's attachment directory. This works by putting the directory path into the ATTACH_DIR property.

  • i (org-attach-set-inherit)

    Set the ATTACH_DIR_INHERIT property, so that children will use the same directory for attachments as the parent does.

Org can add and change entries based on information found in RSS feeds and Atom feeds. You could use this to make a task out of each new podcast in a podcast feed. Or you could use a phone-based note-creating service on the web to import tasks into Org. To access feeds, configure the variable org-feed-alist. The docstring of this variable has detailed information. Here is just an example:

(setq org-feed-alist
     '(("Slashdot"
         "http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot"
         "~/txt/org/feeds.org" "Slashdot Entries")))

will configure that new items from the feed provided by rss.slashdot.org will result in new entries in the file ~/org/feeds.org under the heading ‘Slashdot Entries', whenever the following command is used:

• C-c C-x g (org-feed-update-all)
• C-c C-x g

  Collect items from the feeds configured in org-feed-alist and act upon them.

• C-c C-x G (org-feed-goto-inbox)

  Prompt for a feed name and go to the inbox configured for this feed.

Under the same headline, Org will create a drawer ‘FEEDSTATUS' in which it will store information about the status of items in the feed, to avoid adding the same item several times.

For more information, including how to read atom feeds, see org-feed.el and the docstring of org-feed-alist.

You can set up Org for handling protocol calls from outside applications that are passed to Emacs through the emacsserver. For example, you can configure bookmarks in your web browser to send a link to the current page to Org and create a note from it using capture (see Capture). Or you could create a bookmark that will tell Emacs to open the local source file of a remote website you are looking at with the browser. See http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-protocol.php for detailed documentation and setup instructions.

When reviewing the captured data, you may want to refile or to copy some of the entries into a different list, for example into a project. Cutting, finding the right location, and then pasting the note is cumbersome. To simplify this process, you can use the following special command:

• C-c M-w (org-copy)

  Copying works like refiling, except that the original note is not deleted.

• C-c C-w (org-refile)

  Refile the entry or region at point. This command offers possible locations for refiling the entry and lets you select one with completion. The item (or all items in the region) is filed below the target heading as a subitem. Depending on org-reverse-note-order, it will be either the first or last subitem.

  By default, all level 1 headlines in the current buffer are considered to be targets, but you can have more complex definitions across a number of files. See the variable org-refile-targets for details. If you would like to select a location via a file-path-like completion along the outline path, see the variables org-refile-use-outline-path and org-outline-path-complete-in-steps. If you would like to be able to create new nodes as new parents for refiling on the fly, check the variable org-refile-allow-creating-parent-nodes. When the variable org-log-refile ⁹⁰ is set, a timestamp or a note will be recorded when an entry has been refiled.

• C-u C-c C-w

  Use the refile interface to jump to a heading.

• C-u C-u C-c C-w (org-refile-goto-last-stored)

  Jump to the location where org-refile last moved a tree to.

• C-2 C-c C-w

  Refile as the child of the item currently being clocked.

• C-3 C-c C-w

  Refile and keep the entry in place. Also see org-refile-keep to make this the default behavior, and beware that this may result in duplicated ID properties.

• C-0 C-c C-w or C-u C-u C-u C-c C-w (org-refile-cache-clear)

  Clear the target cache. Caching of refile targets can be turned on by setting org-refile-use-cache. To make the command see new possible targets, you have to clear the cache with this command.

When a project represented by a (sub)tree is finished, you may want to move the tree out of the way and to stop it from contributing to the agenda. Archiving is important to keep your working files compact and global searches like the construction of agenda views fast.

• C-c C-x C-a (org-archive-subtree-default)

  Archive the current entry using the command specified in the variable org-archive-default-command.

The information to be shown is normally collected from all agenda files, the files listed in the variable org-agenda-files ⁹¹. If a directory is part of this list, all files with the extension .org in this directory will be part of the list.

Thus, even if you only work with a single Org file, that file should be put into the list⁹². You can customize org-agenda-files, but the easiest way to maintain it is through the following commands

• C-c [ (org-agenda-file-to-front)

  Add current file to the list of agenda files. The file is added to the front of the list. If it was already in the list, it is moved to the front. With a prefix argument, file is added/moved to the end.

• C-c ] (org-remove-file)

  Remove current file from the list of agenda files.

• /C-'/ (org-cycle-agenda-files)
• /C-,/

  Cycle through agenda file list, visiting one file after the other.

• M-x org-iswitchb RET

  Command to use an iswitchb-like interface to switch to and between Org buffers.

The Org menu contains the current list of files and can be used to visit any of them.

If you would like to focus the agenda temporarily on a file not in this list, or on just one file in the list, or even on only a subtree in a file, then this can be done in different ways. For a single agenda command, you may press < once or several times in the dispatcher (see Agenda dispatcher). To restrict the agenda scope for an extended period, use the following commands:

• C-c C-x < (org-agenda-set-restriction-lock)

  Permanently restrict the agenda to the current subtree. When with a prefix argument, or with the cursor before the first headline in a file, the agenda scope is set to the entire file. This restriction remains in effect until removed with C-c C-x >, or by typing either < or > in the agenda dispatcher. If there is a window displaying an agenda view, the new restriction takes effect immediately.

• C-c C-x > (org-agenda-remove-restriction-lock)

  Remove the permanent restriction created by C-c C-x <.

When working with speedbar.el, you can use the following commands in the Speedbar frame:

• < in the speedbar frame (org-speedbar-set-agenda-restriction)

  Permanently restrict the agenda to the item – either an Org file or a subtree in such a file – at the cursor in the Speedbar frame. If there is a window displaying an agenda view, the new restriction takes effect immediately.

• > in the speedbar frame (org-agenda-remove-restriction-lock)

  Lift the restriction.

The views are created through a dispatcher, which should be bound to a global key – for example C-c a (see Activation). In the following we will assume that C-c a is indeed how the dispatcher is accessed and list keyboard access to commands accordingly. After pressing C-c a, an additional letter is required to execute a command. The dispatcher offers the following default commands:

• a

  Create the calendar-like agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda).

• t / T

  Create a list of all TODO items (see Global TODO list).

• m / M

  Create a list of headlines matching a TAGS expression (see Matching tags and properties).

• L

  Create the timeline view for the current buffer (see Timeline).

• s

  Create a list of entries selected by a boolean expression of keywords and/or regular expressions that must or must not occur in the entry.

• /

  Search for a regular expression in all agenda files and additionally in the files listed in org-agenda-text-search-extra-files. This uses the Emacs command multi-occur. A prefix argument can be used to specify the number of context lines for each match, default is 1.

• # / !

  Create a list of stuck projects (see Stuck projects).

• <

  Restrict an agenda command to the current buffer⁹³. After pressing <, you still need to press the character selecting the command.

• < <

  If there is an active region, restrict the following agenda command to the region. Otherwise, restrict it to the current subtree⁹⁴. After pressing < <, you still need to press the character selecting the command.

• *

  Toggle sticky agenda views. By default, Org maintains only a single agenda buffer and rebuilds it each time you change the view, to make sure everything is always up to date. If you often switch between agenda views and the build time bothers you, you can turn on sticky agenda buffers or make this the default by customizing the variable org-agenda-sticky. With sticky agendas, the agenda dispatcher will not recreate agenda views from scratch, it will only switch to the selected one, and you need to update the agenda by hand with r or g when needed. You can toggle sticky agenda view any time with org-toggle-sticky-agenda.

You can also define custom commands that will be accessible through the dispatcher, just like the default commands. This includes the possibility to create extended agenda buffers that contain several blocks together, for example the weekly agenda, the global TODO list and a number of special tags matches. See Custom agenda views.

In this section we describe the built-in views.

Before displaying items in an agenda view, Org mode visually prepares the items and sorts them. Each item occupies a single line. The line starts with a prefix that contains the category (see Categories) of the item and other important information. You can customize in which column tags will be displayed through org-agenda-tags-column. You can also customize the prefix using the option org-agenda-prefix-format. This prefix is followed by a cleaned-up version of the outline headline associated with the item.

Entries in the agenda buffer are linked back to the Org file or diary file where they originate. You are not allowed to edit the agenda buffer itself, but commands are provided to show and jump to the original entry location, and to edit the Org files “remotely” from the agenda buffer. In this way, all information is stored only once, removing the risk that your agenda and note files may diverge.

Some commands can be executed with mouse clicks on agenda lines. For the other commands, the cursor needs to be in the desired line.

Custom agenda commands serve two purposes: to store and quickly access frequently used TODO and tags searches, and to create special composite agenda buffers. Custom agenda commands will be accessible through the dispatcher (see Agenda dispatcher), just like the default commands.

If you are away from your computer, it can be very useful to have a printed version of some agenda views to carry around. Org mode can export custom agenda views as plain text, HTML¹⁰³, Postscript, PDF¹⁰⁴, and iCalendar files. If you want to do this only occasionally, use the command

• C-x C-w (org-agenda-write)

  Write the agenda view to a file. Depending on the extension of the selected file name, the view will be exported as HTML (extension .html or .htm), Postscript (extension .ps), iCalendar (extension .ics), or plain text (any other extension). Use the variable org-agenda-exporter-settings to set options for ps-print and for htmlize to be used during export, for example

  (setq org-agenda-exporter-settings
        '((ps-number-of-columns 2)
          (ps-landscape-mode t)
          (org-agenda-add-entry-text-maxlines 5)
          (htmlize-output-type 'css)))
  

If you need to export certain agenda views frequently, you can associate any custom agenda command with a list of output file names ¹⁰⁵. Here is an example that first defines custom commands for the agenda and the global TODO list, together with a number of files to which to export them. Then we define two block agenda commands and specify file names for them as well. File names can be relative to the current working directory, or absolute.

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("X" agenda "" nil ("agenda.html" "agenda.ps"))
        ("Y" alltodo "" nil ("todo.html" "todo.txt" "todo.ps"))
        ("h" "Agenda and Home-related tasks"
         ((agenda "")
          (tags-todo "home")
          (tags "garden"))
         nil
         ("~/views/home.html"))
        ("o" "Agenda and Office-related tasks"
         ((agenda)
          (tags-todo "work")
          (tags "office"))
         nil
         ("~/views/office.ps" "~/calendars/office.ics"))))

The extension of the file name determines the type of export. If it is .html, Org mode will use the htmlize.el package to convert the buffer to HTML and save it to this file name. If the extension is .ps, ps-print-buffer-with-faces is used to produce Postscript output. If the extension is .ics, iCalendar export is run export over all files that were used to construct the agenda, and limit the export to entries listed in the agenda. Any other extension produces a plain ASCII file.

The export files are not created when you use one of those commands interactively because this might use too much overhead. Instead, there is a special command to produce all specified files in one step:

• C-c a e (org-store-agenda-views)

  Export all agenda views that have export file names associated with them.

You can use the options section of the custom agenda commands to also set options for the export commands. For example:

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("X" agenda ""
         ((ps-number-of-columns 2)
          (ps-landscape-mode t)
          (org-agenda-prefix-format " [ ] ")
          (org-agenda-with-colors nil)
          (org-agenda-remove-tags t))
         ("theagenda.ps"))))

This command sets two options for the Postscript exporter, to make it print in two columns in landscape format – the resulting page can be cut in two and then used in a paper agenda. The remaining settings modify the agenda prefix to omit category and scheduling information, and instead include a checkbox to check off items. We also remove the tags to make the lines compact, and we don't want to use colors for the black-and-white printer. Settings specified in org-agenda-exporter-settings will also apply, but the settings in org-agenda-custom-commands take precedence.

From the command line you may also use

emacs -eval (org-batch-store-agenda-views) -kill

or, if you need to modify some parameters¹⁰⁶

emacs -eval '(org-batch-store-agenda-views                      \
              org-agenda-span (quote month)                     \
              org-agenda-start-day "2007-11-01"                 \
              org-agenda-include-diary nil                      \
              org-agenda-files (quote ("~/org/project.org")))'  \
      -kill

which will create the agenda views restricted to the file ~/org/project.org, without diary entries and with a 30-day extent.

You can also extract agenda information in a way that allows further processing by other programs. See Extracting agenda information, for more information.

Column view (see Column view) is normally used to view and edit properties embedded in the hierarchical structure of an Org file. It can be quite useful to use column view also from the agenda, where entries are collected by certain criteria.

• C-c C-x C-c (org-agenda-columns)

  Turn on column view in the agenda.

To understand how to use this properly, it is important to realize that the entries in the agenda are no longer in their proper outline environment. This causes the following issues:

1. Org needs to make a decision which COLUMNS format to use. Since the entries in the agenda are collected from different files, and different files may have different COLUMNS formats, this is a non-trivial problem. Org first checks if the variable org-agenda-overriding-columns-format is currently set, and if so, takes the format from there. Otherwise it takes the format associated with the first item in the agenda, or, if that item does not have a specific format (defined in a property, or in its file), it uses org-columns-default-format.
2. If any of the columns has a summary type defined (see Column attributes), turning on column view in the agenda will visit all relevant agenda files and make sure that the computations of this property are up to date. This is also true for the special CLOCKSUM property. Org will then sum the values displayed in the agenda. In the daily/weekly agenda, the sums will cover a single day; in all other views they cover the entire block. It is vital to realize that the agenda may show the same entry twice (for example as scheduled and as a deadline), and it may show two entries from the same hierarchy (for example a parent and its child). In these cases, the summation in the agenda will lead to incorrect results because some values will count double.
3. When the column view in the agenda shows the CLOCKSUM, that is always the entire clocked time for this item. So even in the daily/weekly agenda, the clocksum listed in column view may originate from times outside the current view. This has the advantage that you can compare these values with a column listing the planned total effort for a task—one of the major applications for column view in the agenda. If you want information about clocked time in the displayed period use clock table mode (press R in the agenda).
4. When the column view in the agenda shows the CLOCKSUM_T, that is always today's clocked time for this item. So even in the weekly agenda, the clocksum listed in column view only originates from today. This lets you compare the time you spent on a task for today, with the time already spent (via CLOCKSUM) and with the planned total effort for it.

Both the native Org mode tables (see Tables) and tables formatted with the table.el package will be exported properly. For Org mode tables, the lines before the first horizontal separator line will become table header lines. You can use the following lines somewhere before the table to assign a caption and a label for cross references, and in the text you can refer to the object with [[tab:basic-data]] (see Internal links):

#+CAPTION: This is the caption for the next table (or link)
#+NAME:   tab:basic-data
   | ... | ...|
   |-----|----|

Optionally, the caption can take the form:

#+CAPTION[Caption for list of tables]: Caption for table.

Some back-ends allow you to directly include images into the exported document. Org does this, if a link to an image files does not have a description part, for example [[./img/a.jpg]]. If you wish to define a caption for the image and maybe a label for internal cross references, make sure that the link is on a line by itself and precede it with #+CAPTION and #+NAME as follows:

#+CAPTION: This is the caption for the next figure link (or table)
#+NAME:   fig:SED-HR4049
[[./img/a.jpg]]

Such images can be displayed within the buffer. See the discussion of image links.

Even though images and tables are prominent examples of captioned structures, the same caption mechanism can apply to many others (e.g., LaTeX equations, source code blocks). Depending on the export back-end, those may or may not be handled.

You can include literal examples that should not be subjected to markup. Such examples will be typeset in monospace, so this is well suited for source code and similar examples.

\#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
 Some example from a text file.
\#+END_EXAMPLE

Note that such blocks may be indented in order to align nicely with indented text and in particular with plain list structure (see Plain lists). For simplicity when using small examples, you can also start the example lines with a colon followed by a space. There may also be additional whitespace before the colon:

Here is an example
   : Some example from a text file.

If the example is source code from a programming language, or any other text that can be marked up by font-lock in Emacs, you can ask for the example to look like the fontified Emacs buffer¹⁰⁹. This is done with the ‘src' block, where you also need to specify the name of the major mode that should be used to fontify the example¹¹⁰, see Easy templates for shortcuts to easily insert code blocks.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
   (defun org-xor (a b)
      "Exclusive or."
      (if a (not b) b))
#+END_SRC

Both in example and in src snippets, you can add a -n switch to the end of the BEGIN line, to get the lines of the example numbered. If you use a +n switch, the numbering from the previous numbered snippet will be continued in the current one. In literal examples, Org will interpret strings like ‘(ref:name)' as labels, and use them as targets for special hyperlinks like [[(name)]] (i.e., the reference name enclosed in single parenthesis). In HTML, hovering the mouse over such a link will remote-highlight the corresponding code line, which is kind of cool.

You can also add a -r switch which removes the labels from the source code¹¹¹. With the -n switch, links to these references will be labeled by the line numbers from the code listing, otherwise links will use the labels with no parentheses. Here is an example:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp -n -r
 (save-excursion (sc)
    (goto-char (point-min))) (jump)
#+END_SRC
In line [[(sc)]] we remember the current position.  [[(jump)][Line (jump)]]
jumps to point-min.

Finally, you can use -i to preserve the indentation of a specific code block (see Editing source code).

If the syntax for the label format conflicts with the language syntax, use a -l switch to change the format, for example ‘#+BEGIN_SRC pascal -n -r -l "((%s))"'. See also the variable org-coderef-label-format.

HTML export also allows examples to be published as text areas (see Text areas in HTML export).

Because the #+BEGIN_... and #+END_... patterns need to be added so often, shortcuts are provided using the Easy templates facility (see Easy templates).

• /C-c '/

  Edit the source code example at point in its native mode. This works by switching to a temporary buffer with the source code. You need to exit by pressing C-c ' again¹¹². The edited version will then replace the old version in the Org buffer. Fixed-width regions (where each line starts with a colon followed by a space) will be edited using artist-mode ¹¹³ to allow creating ASCII drawings easily. Using this command in an empty line will create a new fixed-width region.

• C-c l

  Calling org-store-link while editing a source code example in a temporary buffer created with /C-c '/ will prompt for a label. Make sure that it is unique in the current buffer, and insert it with the proper formatting like ‘(ref:label)' at the end of the current line. Then the label is stored as a link ‘(label)', for retrieval with C-c C-l.

During export, you can include the content of another file. For example, to include your .emacs file, you could use:

#+INCLUDE: "~/.emacs" src emacs-lisp

The first parameter names the the file to include. The optional second and third parameter specify the markup (i.e., ‘example' or ‘src'), and, if the markup is ‘src', the language for formatting the contents.

If markup is requested, the included content will be placed within an appropriate block¹¹⁴. No changes to the included content are made and it is the responsibility of the user to ensure that the result is valid Org syntax. For markup ‘example' and ‘src', which is requesting a literal example, the content will be code-escaped before inclusion.

If no markup is requested, the text will be assumed to be in Org mode format and will be processed normally. However, footnote labels (see Footnotes) in the file will be made local to that file. Contents of the included file will belong to the same structure (headline, item) containing the INCLUDE keyword. In particular, headlines within the file will become children of the current section. That behavior can be changed by providing an additional keyword parameter, :minlevel. In that case, all headlines in the included file will be shifted so the one with the lowest level reaches that specified level. For example, to make a file become a sibling of the current top-level headline, use

#+INCLUDE: "~/my-book/chapter2.org" :minlevel 1

You can also include a portion of a file by specifying a lines range using the :lines keyword parameter. The line at the upper end of the range will not be included. The start and/or the end of the range may be omitted to use the obvious defaults.

#+INCLUDE: "~/.emacs" :lines "5-10"   Include lines 5 to 10, 10 excluded
#+INCLUDE: "~/.emacs" :lines "-10"    Include lines 1 to 10, 10 excluded
#+INCLUDE: "~/.emacs" :lines "10-"    Include lines from 10 to EOF

Finally, you may use a file-link to extract an object as matched by org-link-search ¹¹⁵ (see Search options). If the :only-contents property is non- nil, only the contents of the requested element will be included, omitting properties drawer and planning-line if present. The :lines keyword operates locally with respect to the requested element. Some examples:

#+INCLUDE: "./paper.org::#theory" :only-contents t
   Include the body of the heading with the custom id theory
#+INCLUDE: "./paper.org::mytable"  Include named element.
#+INCLUDE: "./paper.org::*conclusion" :lines 1-20
   Include the first 20 lines of the headline named conclusion.

• /C-c '/

  Visit the include file at point.

You can specify entries that will be used for generating an index during publishing. This is done by lines starting with #+INDEX. An entry the contains an exclamation mark will create a sub item. See Generating an index for more information.

* Curriculum Vitae
#+INDEX: CV
#+INDEX: Application!CV

You can define text snippets with

#+MACRO: name   replacement text $1, $2 are arguments

which can be referenced {{{name(arg1, arg2)}}} ¹¹⁶.

These references, called macros, can be inserted anywhere Org markup is recognized: paragraphs, headlines, verse blocks, tables cells and lists. They can also be used in keywords accepting Org syntax, e.g., #+CAPTION, #+TITLE, #+AUTHOR, #+DATE and some others, export back-end specific, ones.

In addition to user-defined macros, a set of predefined macros can be used:

• {{{title}}}
• {{{author}}}
• {{{email}}}

  These macros are replaced with the information available at the time of export.

• {{{date}}}
• {{{date(FORMAT)}}}

  This macro refers to the #+DATE keyword. FORMAT is an optional argument to the {{{date}}} macro that will be used only if #+DATE is a single timestamp. FORMAT should be a format string understood by format-time-string.

• {{{time(FORMAT)}}}
• {{{modification-time(FORMAT)}}}

  These macros refer to the date and time when the document is exported and to the modification date and time of the file being exported, respectively. FORMAT should be a format string understood by format-time-string.

• {{{input-file}}}

  This macro refers to the filename of the exported file, if any.

• {{{property(PROPERTY-NAME)}}}
• {{{property(PROPERTY-NAME,SEARCH-OPTION)}}}

  This macro returns the value of property PROPERTY-NAME in current entry. If SEARCH-OPTION (see Search options) refers to a remote entry, it will be used instead.

The surrounding brackets can be made invisible by setting org-hide-macro-markers non- nil.

Macro expansion takes place during the very beginning of the export process.

Plain ASCII is normally sufficient for almost all note taking. Exceptions include scientific notes, which often require mathematical symbols and the occasional formula. LaTeX¹¹⁷ is widely used to typeset scientific documents. Org mode supports embedding LaTeX code into its files, because many academics are used to writing and reading LaTeX source code, and because it can be readily processed to produce pretty output for a number of export back-ends.