8.3.1 Inserting deadlines or schedules

The following commands allow you to quickly insert a deadline or to schedule an item:[^65]

C-c C-d (org-deadline)

Insert 'DEADLINE' keyword along with a stamp. The insertion happens in the line directly following the headline. Remove any 'CLOSED' timestamp . When called with a prefix argument, also remove any existing deadline from the entry. Depending on the variable org-log-redeadline, take a note when changing an existing deadline[^66].

C-c C-s (org-schedule)

Insert 'SCHEDULED' keyword along with a stamp. The insertion happens in the line directly following the headline. Remove any 'CLOSED' timestamp. When called with a prefix argument, also remove the scheduling date from the entry. Depending on the variable org-log-reschedule, take a note when changing an existing scheduling time[^67].

C-c / d (org-check-deadlines)

Create a sparse tree with all deadlines that are either past-due, or which will become due within org-deadline-warning-days. With C-u prefix, show all deadlines in the file. With a numeric prefix, check that many days. For example, C-1 C-c / d shows all deadlines due tomorrow.

C-c / b (org-check-before-date)

Sparse tree for deadlines and scheduled items before a given date.

C-c / a (org-check-after-date)

Sparse tree for deadlines and scheduled items after a given date.

Note that org-schedule and org-deadline supports setting the date by indicating a relative time e.g., '+1d' sets the date to the next day after today, and '--1w' sets the date to the previous week before any current timestamp.