How do I uncheck all checkboxes in a `.org` file with a single command?

Question

Set every checkbox to state [ ]

From:

- [ ] One
- [-] Two
- [x] Three

To:

- [ ] One
- [ ] Two
- [ ] Three

Answer 1

Use the command org-reset-checkbox-state-subtree.

This resets the state of the checkboxes in the subtree under point.

In order to get the whole file, you need to walk the top-level headings and apply the function to each such heading. The function org-map-entries is designed to do such walks and provides a very general setting for them. In this case, we need to specialize it to just the top-level headings in the file:

(org-map-entries #'org-reset-checkbox-state-subtree "LEVEL=1" 'file)

This walks all the top-level headings in the file and applies the function to each such heading.

More information about org-map-entries can be found in the manual.

Answer 2

This feels a little awkward. This goes iterates over all the times, sets them all to [-], toggles that to [X] and then toggles that to [ ].

(org-element-map (org-element-parse-buffer)
    'item (lambda (item)
        (goto-char (org-element-property :begin item))
        (org-toggle-checkbox '(16))
        (org-toggle-checkbox '())
        (org-toggle-checkbox '())))