7

Org agenda shows tasks only on the scheduled date, not when those tasks were actually one. There are two cases that I see here:

1. Tasks not done on day scheduled

If a task is scheduled for Sunday, but marked DONE on Monday, the task will be shown in the agenda (as DONE) for Sunday. This task -- if put into a file listed in org-agenda-files -- will show the behavior:

* DONE this shows up in agenda on Sunday, but not Monday.
CLOSED: [2015-09-14 Mon 12:22] SCHEDULED: <2015-09-13 Sun>

2. Recurring tasks that have ever been done

A recurring task shows up (as TODO) on the date it's scheduled on and any dates it will recur on. But it won't show up (as DONE) on dates it was DONE on. This task shows the behavior:

* TODO this task shows up on Monday, and every day after, but not the Sunday it was done on.
SCHEDULED: <2015-09-14 Mon +1d>
- State "DONE"       from "TODO"       [2015-09-13 Sun 23:59]
:PROPERTIES:
:LAST_REPEAT: [2015-09-13 Sun 12:26]
:END:

I think these two things are the same behavior -- show tasks as DONE on days they were done on, nevermind when they were scheduled.

I could possibly make a custom view that contains, for a given set of dates, all tasks scheduled for those dates, and all tasks done on those dates, but that would basically be a reimplementation of org agenda. I'd also lose out on all the features built around the agenda.

The org documentation seems to hint that this is not customizable:

As a consequence of shifting the base date [by marking a repeating task done], this entry will no longer be visible in the agenda when checking past dates, but all future instances will be visible.

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  • 1
    Does the agenda's log view mode (activate with l) help. It shows close timestamps and logged state changes.
    – erikstokes
    Commented Sep 15, 2015 at 21:45
  • @erikstokes it seems to effect task #1, but not #2. There's also a weird interaction with at least one task that I haven't been able to figure out yet. This task was recurring, but no longer is. I'll have to investigate further. Do you see a difference with the example tasks in the question? The HTML parser was stripping out scheduled times from them, so if you tried them before, I don't think they would've worked. They should be working now.
    – zck
    Commented Sep 15, 2015 at 22:04
  • You have to turn on logging to see past occurrences of a repeating task. Set org-log-done.
    – erikstokes
    Commented Sep 15, 2015 at 22:25

1 Answer 1

10

By default org-agenda-log-mode shows only closed and clock items. To show done recurring tasks add state symbol to the org-agenda-log-mode-items variable, like so:

(setq org-agenda-log-mode-items '(closed clock state))

You will now see done recurring tasks in your org-agenda by pressing l.

1
  • 2
    This kind of does it, but I don't really love the way this works. It's not on by default (one has to press l), it adds a bunch of (what I would consider ugly and distracting) timestamps with no data in them, and it makes DONE tasks scheduled for one day show up twice.
    – zck
    Commented Oct 24, 2018 at 23:17

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