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I am trying to create a weekly agenda that I can print out and use without having to be at the computer

To best explain my problem I will use some screenshots

This is the normal org file that I will export as an agenda

enter image description here

These are the settings I have in for exporting my agenda

(setq org-agenda-exporter-settings
       '((ps-number-of-columns 1)
         (ps-landscape-mode nil)
         (org-agenda-add-entry-text-maxlines 5)
         ))   

(setq org-agenda-prefix-format "[ ] %t ")
(setq org-agenda-entry-text-mode t)
(setq org-agenda-entry-text-maxlines 5)
(setq org-agenda-skip-additional-timestamps-same-entry nil)
(setq org-agenda-use-time-grid nil)
(setq org-agenda-with-colors t)
(setq org-agenda-remove-tags nil)
(setq ps-print-header nil)

And a screen shot below shows the result of the export (as a pdf file) enter image description here

The problem here is that I am interested in displaying extra information under each headline (for example ring exercise has a sub list of different exercises to do) however when I do this I am forced to print out the whole time stamp and its syntax as well.

But I don't need this since I already formatted the prefix to display the time. This time stamp also takes up to much space.

I was wondering if there was any way that I can get rid of just the timestamp line but preserve the rest of the text under each headline?

I tried searching for ways to do this but to avail. I just continually found ways to edit, filter and organize specific agenda headings but not edit the info underneath.

If there is no function or variable that I can use, how can I structure my org file to avoid this problem?

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  • does my answer below work for you?
    – gregoryg
    Jul 13, 2020 at 16:44
  • 1
    yeah it does sorry for the delay Jul 14, 2020 at 8:23

1 Answer 1

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Just to make it clear, this is not a problem with exporting, but of showing entry text in the agenda.

Turns out there is a variable to exclude text that matches a list of regular expressions.

You can exclude anything that looks like an active timestamp (there is also the variable org-element--timestamp-regexp but that did not work in my tests):

(setq org-agenda-entry-text-exclude-regexps 
      '("<[0-9]\\{4\\}-[0-9]\\{2\\}-[0-9]\\{2\\}[^>]*>"))

That does not exclude the whole line, so you will still have an indicator showing an empty line, like this

Day-agenda (W30):
2020-07-24 Fri _________________________________________________________________
[ ]  7:00- 8:30 TODO Ring exercise
    >      
    > - [ ] angled pullups (for back)
    > - [ ] angled pushups (for chest)
    > - [ ] squats (for legs)
    > - [ ] lunges (for legs)
[ ] 12:00-13:00 TODO Check weight and record it on calendar

To get rid of the now-empty lines, you can add a finalizer hook

(defun gg/entry-text-nix-empty-line ()
  "Delete empty entry text lines in agenda"
  (goto-char (point-min))
  (replace-regexp (concat "^ *" org-agenda-entry-text-leaders " *\n") ""))

(add-hook 'org-agenda-finalize-hook 'gg/entry-text-nix-empty-line)
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  • 1
    thank you so much for the response, I never realized that there was a variable that can modify the text under the heading Jul 14, 2020 at 8:23
  • 1
    Also another point that I would like to add is that for getting rid the empty lines, I tried your function but it didn't work, HOWEVER when I put the time stamp at the bottom of the text (i.e. the underneath the sub lists) then the empty line automatically disappears anyway. Convenient! Jul 14, 2020 at 8:26

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