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This documentation explains how to set up custom agenda views, and I understand the example code I've seen there. But there is one thing I'd like to do that might not be possible: I'd like to look over my next actions by category instead of looking through all of them at once. However, to do this I need a "miscellaneous" category to make sure I don't lose anything. This category would include all TODOs that are not tagged with OFFICE, ERRANDS, or HOME:

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("O" tags-todo "OFFICE") 
        ("B" tags-todo "ERRANDS")       
        ("H" tags-todo "HOME") 
        ; Here comes the part where I make up pseudocode to show that
        ; I want a list of all TODOs that do not contain any of the
        ; tags specified above:
        ; ("M" tags-todo-NOT "OFFICE" "ERRANDS" "HOME")
        ))

Is this possible using Elisp?

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  • 1
    By the way: Welcome to Emacs.SE! :)
    – itsjeyd
    Apr 9, 2015 at 6:39

1 Answer 1

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Yes, that's possible:

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("O" tags-todo "OFFICE") 
        ("B" tags-todo "ERRANDS")   
        ("H" tags-todo "HOME") 
        ("M" tags-todo "-OFFICE-ERRANDS-HOME")))

There's two things at work here:

  1. - negates a search term. For example, -OFFICE matches headlines that are not tagged with :OFFICE:.

  2. Search terms can be concatenated with + or -. A + in front of a tag means that headlines matching a query must include that tag.

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  • Nice! Seems to be working perfectly. :)
    – Var87
    Apr 8, 2015 at 21:10
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    You can also search for or negate regular expressions with {...}. For example "-{OFFICE\\|ERRANDS\\|HOME}" will include everything except those tagged with one of OFFICE, ERRANDS or HOME.
    – erikstokes
    Apr 8, 2015 at 22:26
  • Thanks! Just curious: Are these (isjeyds and eriks examples) features or a typical pattern of elisp in general or specific to orgmode?
    – Var87
    Apr 9, 2015 at 15:07
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    The "+/-" syntax for including/excluding things is an orgmode thing as is the "{}" syntax for regular expressions. The regex inside the "{}" is a standard Emacs regex.
    – erikstokes
    Apr 10, 2015 at 1:40

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