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11.6.1 Storing searches

The first application of custom searches is the definition of keyboard shortcuts for frequently used searches, either creating an agenda buffer, or a sparse tree (the latter covering of course only the current buffer).

Custom commands are configured in the variable org-agenda-custom-commands. You can customize this variable, for example by pressing C from the agenda dispatcher (see Agenda Dispatcher). You can also directly set it with Emacs Lisp in the Emacs init file. The following example contains all valid agenda views:

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("x" agenda)
        ("y" agenda*)
        ("w" todo "WAITING")
        ("W" todo-tree "WAITING")
        ("u" tags "+boss-urgent")
        ("v" tags-todo "+boss-urgent")
        ("U" tags-tree "+boss-urgent")
        ("f" occur-tree "\\<FIXME\\>")
        ("h" . "HOME+Name tags searches") ;description for "h" prefix
        ("hl" tags "+home+Lisa")
        ("hp" tags "+home+Peter")
        ("hk" tags "+home+Kim")))

The initial string in each entry defines the keys you have to press after the dispatcher command in order to access the command. Usually this is just a single character, but if you have many similar commands, you can also define two-letter combinations where the first character is the same in several combinations and serves as a prefix key1. The second parameter is the search type, followed by the string or regular expression to be used for the matching. The example above will therefore define:

x​

as a global search for agenda entries planned2 this week/day.

y​

as the same search, but only for entries with an hour specification like ‘[h]h:mm’—think of them as appointments.

w​

as a global search for TODO entries with ‘WAITING’ as the TODO keyword.

W​

as the same search, but only in the current buffer and displaying the results as a sparse tree.

u​

as a global tags search for headlines tagged ‘boss’ but not ‘urgent’.

v​

The same search, but limiting it to headlines that are also TODO items.

U​

as the same search, but only in the current buffer and displaying the result as a sparse tree.

f​

to create a sparse tree (again, current buffer only) with all entries containing the word ‘FIXME’.

h​

as a prefix command for a ‘HOME’ tags search where you have to press an additional key (l, p or k) to select a name (Lisa, Peter, or Kim) as additional tag to match.

Note that *-tree agenda views need to be called from an Org buffer as they operate on the current buffer only.

  1. You can provide a description for a prefix key by inserting a cons cell with the prefix and the description.↩
  2. Planned means here that these entries have some planning information attached to them, like a time-stamp, a scheduled or a deadline string. See org-agenda-entry-types on how to set what planning information is taken into account.↩