"replace-string" with Org-mode capture buffer and link URLs

Question

I want use Org-mode to keep track of e-mails. When I've read the e-mail, and added it to Org, I want to archive the e-mail but still have a link to the archived e-mail.

Pretty much exactly this:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15736590/how-to-automatically-track-links-in-org-mode-to-gnus-messages

I've followed the answer, but it doesn't work. It seems the hook has been updated to: org-capture-before-finalize-hook so I've updated the code as necessary, and it runs.

However, I'm getting the message:

Replaced 0 occurrences (skipped 1 filtered out)

So, it seems that while the buffer is in org-mode, the hidden URL link text gets filtered out if I use replace-string on the buffer. Is there a way around this?

Answer 1

From the help text for replace-string:

... ignore hidden matches if `search-invisible' is nil ...

So setting (setq search-invisible t) ought to solve your problem.

Or, to avoid side-effects, set it temporarily inside your function, like so:

(defun hs/replace ()
   (interactive)
   (goto-char 1)
   (let ((search-invisible t))
     (replace-string "INBOX" "Archive"))
   )