Today I went to the EMACS org wiki http://orgmode.org/manual/Setting-up-capture.html#Setting-up-capture and copy/pasted this directly into my .emacs file (setq org-default-notes-file (concat org-directory "/notes.org")) (define-key global-map "\C-cc" 'org-capture) Now I'm getting this: Warning (initialization): An error occurred while loading ‘/home/kantuck/.emacs’: Symbol's value as variable is void: org-directory To ensure normal operation, you should investigate and remove the cause of the error in your initialization file. Start Emacs with the ‘--debug-init’ option to view a complete error backtrace. I also tried a fresh .emacs file incase of conflicts, and put only that into it, and still it's giving me that error. Any idea what's going on?