date range search with org-mode

Question

Problem: lets say I want to search for all meetings I attended last March.

I can search for date ranges in my archive file using a sparse-tree search (M-x org-sparse-tree D) but I can't figure out how to refine this search to add the word "meeting". Nothing in the advanced searching section of manual looked relevant.

I'm guessing this is done using a regex search but I can't figure it out.

edit: In the example I gave meeting would be a string. I probably used a poor example, as tagging all meetings would certainly work. I'd might be looking to search the content of the headline (for example for the name of the individual I met with, or the activity engaged in).

Answer 1

You can probably use an m search. See Matching Tags and Properties in the manual. It's available in the Org agenda dispatcher as well as in the sparse-tree dispatcher (C-c /).

For example, you can use

TIMESTAMP>="<2024-03-01>"&TIMESTAMP<="<2024-03-31>"+meeting

if meeting is a tag.

Or you can use

TIMESTAMP>="<2024-03-01>"&TIMESTAMP<="<2024-03-31>"+TODO="MEETING"

if MEETING is a TODO state.

Or you can use

TIMESTAMP>="<2024-03-01>"&TIMESTAMP<="<2024-03-31>"+ITEM={meeting}

if the headline title is to match the regexp "meeting".

The doc page I linked above has lots of examples, but the best thing to do is experiment: the syntax is a bit finicky, so reading the page closely will pay dividends (I have to reread it every time I want to use it...).

Two pieces of advice:

• don't give in to the temptation to introduce blanks (e.g. around the relational or logical operators) to make the expression more readable: if you type the expression in and you type a space where it is not expected, you get some notification (perhaps Not a match), but if you paste in a string with spaces, you might get an error or, worse, you might get spurious matches.

• watch the quotes.