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2.7 Drawers

Sometimes you want to keep information associated with an entry, but you normally do not 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 a drawer at point by calling org-insert-drawer, which is bound to C-c C-x d. With an active region, this command puts the region inside the drawer. With a prefix argument, this command calls org-insert-property-drawer, which creates a ‘PROPERTIES’ drawer right below the current headline. Org mode uses this special drawer for storing properties (see Properties and Columns). You cannot use it for anything else.

Completion over drawer keywords is also possible using M-TAB1.

Visibility cycling (see Visibility Cycling) on the headline hides and shows the entry, but keep the drawer collapsed to a single line. In order to look inside the drawer, you need to move point to the drawer line and press TAB there.

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 ‘LOGBOOK’ drawer. If you want to store a quick note there, in a similar way to state changes, use

C-c C-z​

Add a time-stamped note to the ‘LOGBOOK’ drawer.

  1. Many desktops intercept M-TAB to switch windows. Use C-M-i or ESC TAB instead.↩