My Personal Notes on Calendars in Emacs org mode

• C-c a org-agenda
• M-S-hammer adds a new TODO or Checkbox
• C-S-hammer adds a new TODO or Checkbox after subtree
• M-S-hammer adds a new TODO or Checkbox
• [ ] M-S-hammer in action
• [ ] M-S-hammer again
• [ ] final example of M-S-hammer

From https://orgmode.org/manual/Priorities.html:

• C-c , prompt for a priority (A, B, or C) A is the highest. If you press space instead of a priority letter, the priority is removed.
• S-up org-priority-up
• S-down org-priority-down

Priorities only matter when orgmode is sorting TODOs to present in an agenda or weekly or daily calendar view.

• C-c . calendar entry C-c . hammer enters todays date
• C-c C-s schedule (add time first if know, then pick date)
• C-c C-d deadline
• C-c C-y calculate time between 2 dates in the time range
• C-c C-d deadline

C-c a will then show a menu from which you can pick by letter, or q to quit.

Press key for an agenda command:
--------------------------------         <   Buffer, subtree/region restriction
a   Agenda for current week or day       >   Remove restriction
t   List of all TODO entries             e   Export agenda views
m   Match a TAGS/PROP/TODO query         T   Entries with special TODO keyword
s   Search for keywords                  M   like m, but only TODO entries
/   Multi-occur                          S   like s, but only TODO entries
?   Find :FLAGGED: entries               C   Configure custom agenda commands
*   Toggle sticky agenda views           #   List stuck projects  (!=configure)

n   Agenda and all TODOs

Most common for beginners are these:

• a Agenda for current week or day
• t List of all TODO entries
• e Export agenda views
• m Match a TAGS/PROP/TODO query
• T Entries with special TODO keyword
• s Search for keywords
• n Agenda and all TODOs

After you can see your weekly agenda, you can change views with some single letter keys:

• f and b for forward and backward
• arrow > and < keys to move forward and backward
• v to view followed by m or y or w for viewing a month, year, or week at a time
• . to return to today
• r to rebuild the agenda (after editing changes in your calendar files)

M-S-hammer adds a new TODO or Checkbox item C-S-hammer adds a new TODO or Checkbox item after subtree

These key bindings are only in effect while your cursor is on a TODO item. So once on the TODO item that you want to schedule, hit C-c C-s and pick a date.

<2022-03-02 Wed> is a timestamp. Type C-c . and select a date using your mouse.

• C-c . hammer defaults to today's date.

I can manually type in < followed by the date in the at form and org mode will automatically recognize it as a date. (all org mode is just text.)

- C-c . prompt for timestamp (default is today) - C-c C-d deadline - C-c C-s scheduled - C-c C-y calculate time between 2 dates in the time range

Can then adjust timestamps (both scheduled and deadline) S-RIGHT/LEFT on a timestamp adds/subtracts 1 day S-UP/DOWN on a timestamp adds/subtracts 1 month/year

Once the date has been chosen, you can add a time simply by typing

• 430pm or 1630

Simply adding a plus + sign plus time period, +h, +d, +w, +m, and +y will event to recur at those intervals.

While in the calendar minibuffer: ?? need to research this.

C-c C-d inserts a deadline (that has an automatic date added) This is done on a heading level, any level)

Select the date, then hammer Could also try C-c . which is a time stamp for today's date.

• easy to add with just typing "[]" with a space so [ ]
• marking the checkbox with a checkmark is also easy with C-c C-x C-b or M-x org-toggle-checkbox

[ ] do this [ ] do the other [ ] do the third [ ] do the final

With dates, you can schedule todo items C-c C-s inserts a scheduled timestamp

Can create repeating scheduled events by simply adding

• +1w to the scheduled timestamp.
• +1w will add that schedule on this day every week.
• ++1w will ensure your scheduled events will only be in the future

Entered:

• M-x global-set-key hammer C-c a org-agenda hammer for just the current session. To make it permanent I added this to my init.el file:

  (add-hook 'org-mode-hook (lambda ()
              (local-set-key (kbd "C-c a") 'org-agenda)))
  ;; C-c a will be assigned only while in org-mode.
  

I noticed that org-agenda was NOT looking in the current org-mode file I was in, but rather looked ONLY in zint-calendar.org file. It turns out I had set this in my init.el file with the line:

(setq org-agenda-files (list "~/eg/zint-calendar.org"))

Since then I changed that to look at a directroy, zpcalendars rather than only one file. Any org-mode calendar files in that directory will be included in C-c a org-mode-agenda lookups. Note that it will ignore the current directory and file from now on.

(setq org-agenda-files (list "~/.emacs.d/zpcalendars/"))

From C-h v org-agenda-files documentation:

The files to be used for agenda display.

If an entry is a directory, all files in that directory that are matched
by org-agenda-file-regexp will be part of the file list.

If the value of the variable is not a list but a single file name, then
the list of agenda files is actually stored and maintained in that file,
one agenda file per line.  In this file paths can be given relative to
org-directory.  Tilde expansion and environment variable substitution
are also made.

Entries may be added to this list with M-x org-agenda-file-to-front
and removed with M-x org-remove-file.

C-h v org-agenda-files to see what the current setting is.