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I have a variety of (facile) tasks in some kind of hierarchy.

* TODO Make a pizza
** TODO Get cheese
*** TODO Buy a cow
** TODO Get tomatoes
*** TODO Grow tomatoes
**** TODO Buy tomatoes
** TODO Buy oven
*** TODO Win Lottery
**** TODO Buy Lottery ticket

If I view these in with the org agenda, they're displayed in a flat fashion:

  .TODO:    TODO Make a pizza
  .TODO:    TODO Get cheese
  .TODO:    TODO Buy a cow
  .TODO:    TODO Get tomatoes
  .TODO:    TODO Grow tomatoes
  .TODO:    TODO Buy tomatoes
  .TODO:    TODO Buy oven
  .TODO:    TODO Win Lottery
  .TODO:    TODO Buy Lottery ticket

I'd like to view these tasks in an indented fashion, so they reflect the dependencies between the tasks. Is this possible / a good idea or am I just using the agenda incorrectly?

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2 Answers 2

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12

Try customizing org-agenda-prefix-format. This can be used to tweak how various kinds of items (including TODOs) are displayed in agenda views.

In particular, you can use %l in the todo format to prefix the item with a number of spaces corresponding to its level in the hierarchy.

Another option would be to use %b to include a 'breadcrumb' trail for each line item showing the hierarchy, e.g. Level1 -> Level2: TODO Do the thing.

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  • This works, but sometimes tasks are out of order. I.e, children are not beneath their parents sometimes. This happens if children have a different priority from their parents and can be set via org-agenda-sorting-strategy
    – Leo Ufimtsev
    Feb 17, 2015 at 22:43
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The variable org-tags-match-list-sublevels can do this:

Documentation: Non-nil means list also sublevels of headlines matching a search. This variable applies to tags/property searches, and also to stuck projects because this search is based on a tags match as well.

When set to the symbol `indented', sublevels are indented with leading dots.

With (setq org-tags-match-list-sublevels 'indented), a number of dots equal to the level will be prepended to each agenda line to indicate its level.

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  • 1
    This doesn't seem to affect the agenda todo view for me (with Org 8.2.10 + Emacs 24.4).
    – glucas
    Dec 30, 2014 at 18:07
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    There are a few agenda buffer producing search functions used by org-mode and this variable may not necessarily apply to all of them [I have not tested this] -- the most common search functions are: org-agenda-list; org-tags-view; org-search-view.
    – lawlist
    Dec 30, 2014 at 19:32
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    @glucas You're right, it doesn't work in the global todo list. It does work in tag and tag-todo searches
    – erikstokes
    Dec 31, 2014 at 15:36

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