Properties and column view

Some text first.

:Owner: Nobody

Try: on this heading press <prefix>p, type Owner, <CR>, and pick Carol. Expect: a new drawer below the heading:

:PROPERTIES:
:Owner:    Carol
:END:

Try: press <prefix>p again, type Budget, <CR>, type 1200 and <CR>. Expect: a line :Budget: 1200 is added to the same drawer.

Try: press <prefix>p, type Status and pick In progress. Expect: :Status: In progress (the quotes of Status_ALL are not written).

Try: press <prefix>p, type TODO, <CR>, type TODO, <CR>. Expect: the heading becomes TODO Plan the release party; no drawer.

Try: press <prefix>p, type DEADLINE, <CR>, type 2026-10-30 and <CR>. Expect: a line DEADLINE: with 2026-10-30 Fri in angle brackets is added below the heading.

Try: press <prefix>p, type PRIORITY, <CR>, A, <CR>. Expect: the heading reads TODO [#A] Plan the release party.

Try: on the :Owner: line press <C-c><C-c>, then s and pick Alice. Expect: :Owner: Alice.

Try: press <prefix>xe and pick 2:00. Expect: :Effort: 2:00 in a new drawer.

Try: press <prefix>xe again and pick another value. Expect: the line is updated in place.

Try: put the cursor on the :Owner: line and press <S-Right> three times. Expect: Bob, Carol, then Alice again.

Try: on the :Status: line press <S-Right> twice, then <S-Left>. Expect: In progress, Done, then In progress again.

Try: on the :Effort: line press <S-Left>. Expect: 0:30.

Try: on the :Room: line press <S-Right>. Expect: the warning "Allowed values for this property have not been defined". Nothing changes.

Try: on the :Color: line of "Draft two", press <S-Right>. Expect: red (after blue it wraps to the first value). The list comes from Color_ALL on the parent.

Try: press <prefix>/ then p, type Client=ACME and <CR>. Expect: the message "1 match for Client="ACME"": only "Website for ACME". (The children don't have the property.)

Try: press <prefix>a then t. Expect: the two tasks show the category acme in the first column: CATEGORY is inherited even without inheritance switched on.

Try: run the inheritance block above again but with { "Client", "Team", "Tools" }, then <prefix>/ m with Tools={xcode}. Expect: only "iOS app": its Tools value is git xcode.

Try: <prefix>/ m with Tools"git gradle kotlin"=. Expect: only "Android app".

Try: <prefix>/ p with Team=mobile. Expect: "Mobile team" and its two children; the rest of the file has platform.

Try: put the cursor on "Release checklist" and press <prefix>C. Expect: the four headlines of this subtree turn into rows; the column titles are in the window bar at the top. The values, shown here as a table (with the stars left out and sub-entries indented):

ITEM                | TODO | PRIORITY | TAGS      | ALLTAGS        | CLOCKSUM
Release checklist   |      | B        | :release: | :release:      | 3:15
  Tag the release   | TODO | A        | :git:     | :release:git:  |
  Write the chang…  | DONE | B        |           | :release:      | 2:30
  Announce it       | TODO | B        | :blog:    | :release:blog: | 0:45

• ITEM is the title without keyword, priority and tags (cut to the width of 20 from %20ITEM);
• PRIORITY is B (the default) where there is no cookie;
• TAGS are the entry's own tags, ALLTAGS include the inherited ones;
• CLOCKSUM of the parent is the total of its subtree (2:30 + 0:45).

Press q to leave column view.

Try: on "Conference trip" press <prefix>C. Expect: dates are shown as inactive timestamps (in square brackets):

• "Book the flight": DEADLINE [2026-10-09 Fri];
• "Hotel": SCHEDULED [2026-10-12 Mon];
• "Talk": TIMESTAMP [2026-11-03 Tue 14:00];
• "Register": CLOSED [2026-09-21 Mon 10:15].

TIMESTAMP is the first active timestamp of the entry text.

Try: put the cursor on "Organise the team day" and press <prefix>C. Expect: five rows; the Effort column of "Organise the team day" shows 3:45, the sum of its four children (1:00 + 0:30 + 2:00 + 0:15). The window bar shows the titles ITEM, TODO, PR…, Owner, Effort and TAGS (the %3PRIORITY column is 3 characters wide, so its title is cut). Press q.

Try: press 1<prefix>C. Expect: every headline of the file is a row now, with the #+COLUMNS: format; each top-level heading shows the Effort total of its subtree (e.g. "Column view" and "Summary operators"). q again.

If you prefer a separate window, columns_view = "table" shows the view as a table in a split (<CR> there jumps to the entry):

require("org.config").opts.columns_view = "table"

Try: run the block and press <prefix>C on "Organise the team day". Expect: a split at the bottom with the same five rows, drawn with │ separators. q closes it. Set the option back to "overlay" to return to the default.

Try: on "Move to the cloud" press <prefix>C. Move to the Owner column of "Pick a provider" (j / k move between rows, l / h between columns) and press n. Expect: Carol, and the drawer of "Pick a provider" now says :Owner: Carol.

Try: in the Status column of the same row press 1. Expect: Not started (the first allowed value).

Try: in the Effort column of "Migrate the mail server" press p. Expect: 2:00, and the total on "Move to the cloud" changes from 7:00 to 5:00.

Try: in the TODO column press n. Expect: the entry becomes DONE.

Try: press > three times (one key at a time) in the Owner column, then q. Expect: the COLUMNS property of "Move to the cloud" now starts %25ITEM %TODO %8Owner: the width was saved.

Try: on "Books to buy" press <prefix>C. Expect:

ITEM            | Pages | Price | Low | Avg | High
Books to buy    | 1363  | 29.49 | 3   | 4.0 | 5
  Dune          | 612   | 9.99  | 5   | 5   | 5
  Neuromancer   | 271   | 7.5   | 4   | 4   | 4
  Snow Crash    | 480   | 12    | 3   | 3   | 3

• Pages{+}: 612 + 271 + 480 = 1363;
• Price{$}: 9.99 + 7.5 + 12 = 29.49, always with two decimals;
• the same property Rating appears three times with different operators and titles: min 3, mean 4.0 (a mean always has a decimal), max 5. Leaves show their own value.

Try: on "Sprint 42" press <prefix>C. Expect: on the "Sprint 42" row: Total 6:15, Min 0:45, Max 4:00, Mean 2:05 (375 minutes / 3 = 125 minutes).

Try: on "Long project" press <prefix>C. Expect: 1d 21:30 on "Long project": 1 day + 20 hours + 90 minutes. Values in units (1d, 20h, 90min) are added up and written with duration_format (default "d h:mm": days, then hours and minutes). When every value is H:MM, the total stays H:MM even past 24 hours.

Try: on "Packing list" press <prefix>C. Expect: on "Packing list": All [-] (some but not all are [X]), Count [2/4], Pct [50%].

Try: in the view, go to the All column of "Charger" and press <C-c><C-c> (or n). Expect: Charger's value becomes [X] (its drawer too), and the parent row shows [-], [3/4], [75%].

Try: on "Waiting times" press <prefix>C. Expect: Shortest 12h, Longest 5d, Average 2d 12h (7.5 days / 3).

The @ operators are meant for ages: a value that is a timestamp, such as [2026-09-01 Tue], counts as the time elapsed since then, so the result changes every day. Durations like the ones above give fixed results.

Try: on "Kitchen remodel" press <prefix>C. Expect: 10-14 on "Kitchen remodel". Each low-high value is treated as a range: the result adds up the midpoints (3 + 2 + 7 = 12) and widens them by the combined spread (the square root of the summed variances, about 2.4), rounded to whole numbers.

Try: on "Company offsite" press <prefix>C. Expect:

ITEM                | Cost    | Effort
Company offsite     | 1800.00 | 2:30
  Travel            | 300.00  | 0:30
    Train tickets   | 240.00  | 0:30
    Taxi            | 60.00   |
  Venue             | 1500.00 | 2:00

Summaries are computed bottom up: "Travel" sums its children, then "Company offsite" sums "Travel" and "Venue". "Taxi" has no Effort and is simply left out. The ;%.2f after + formats every value of the column, the entries' own values too, not just the sums.

Try: on "Garden project" press <prefix>C, then q. Expect: the drawer of "Garden project" now reads :COST: 155: the sum was written into the empty Cost property (its name upper-cased, like Emacs).

Try: in the drawer of "Seeds" change 35 to 50, then on the :COST: line of "Garden project" press <C-c><C-c> and c (compute). Expect: 170: :Org compute_property_at_point recomputes just this property without opening column view.

Try: run the block, then on "Bug triage" press <prefix>C. Expect: the Severity column of "Bug triage" shows 3.