Org Journal File Format: %Y/%m/%d.org

When I try to save my journal entry: No such directory.

😿

I just started using org-journal (with org-mode 8.2.5h, org-journal 1.4.8) and went through the customization options. I wanted my journal files to use YYYY-MM-DD instead of YYYYMMDD, so I changed two variables:

• org-journal-file-format to "%Y-%m-%d"
• org-journal-file-pattern to "[0-9]\\{4\\}-[0-9]\\{2\\}-[0-9]\\{2\\}"

However, this breaks browsing journal entries with the calendar, as well as org-journal-open-next-entry and org-journal-open-previous-entry. Poking around, I found that those two functions, as well as org-journal-get-list, hard-code the parsing of the filename into year, month, day components. They assume YYYYMMDD.

That means there are /three/ ways in which the filename format is encoded:

1. org-journal-file-format to create new entries
2. org-journal-file-pattern to find entries on disk and to set auto-mode-alist
3. the three functions that parse the filename

All three need to be kept in sync for the calendar integration to work.

Unfortunately (3) is not user-customizable without copying those functions and modifying them. That means customizing (1) and (2) breaks things. Maybe org-journal-file-pattern could use explicitly numbered regexp groups to mark the year, month, day. Or maybe everything can be somehow derived from org-journal-file-format.

Following samspo suggestions in issue #2, I added

(setq org-journal-file-format "%Y%m%d.txt")
(setq org-journal-file-pattern "201[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].txt")

to my .emacs but encounters problems when calendar is called. First, it won't allow you to visit future dates when "]" is pressed. The error message is " There was no year zero". Secondly, when I set journal directory to a folder in my dropbox, only "Fundamental mode" is used and not the "org-mode", however, if I use the default directory (~/Documents/journal/), org-mode as a major mode is used. Interestingly, if I change the directory options directly within the org-journal.el file to point to where I would like it to be in dropbox, org-major mode is used.

Thirdly, is it possible to activate the calendar the moment "C-c j" is pressed? Lastly, when in calendar mode, and you have the cursor anywhere (not on any date) and you try to navigate the journal list with "[" or "]", you'll get an error message "Wrong type argument: number, nil"

There seems to be a problem with splitting windows when adding a new entry:
http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/14479/org-journal-ui-behaviour

The C-c C-j command does not bring up journal in all major modes. When using latex, for example, this key binding does not bring up journal for entry. Is there a way to force this key bind to work in all (major/minor) mode?

Also I know that in org-capture, the key binding C-c C-c closes the capture buffer. Is it possible to implement the idea in org-journal? I know this key bind is used to assign tags but that only happens when at a heading (, *,***, etc) line. You can implement it to the effect that when not at a heading line and the C-c C-c key is pressed, the journal closes.

In fact, I am getting different errors based on my org version.

Version 8.2.5

1. Enable org-journal-mode.
2. Open the calendar date selector via C->.
3. Select any date.
4. press "i" and the error message appears: "Symbol's function definition is void: org-agenda-diary-entry".

Version 7.9.3f

1. Enable org-journal-mode.
2. Open the calendar date selector via C->.
3. Select any date.
4. press "i" (msg with "Diary entry day anniversary block" etc. appears, I assume this is normal)
5. press "j" and the error message appears: "Buffer is read-only: #" and in the big main buffer a file list (of the current working directory?)

Any ideas?

I want my journal to be formatted something like this, with a single file for each week.

* Monday, 01/04/16
** 10:28 Company meeting
Endless discussions about projects. Not much progress
* Tuesday, 01/05/16
** 10:30 Another company meeting
Same as yesterday.

I have tried adding (setq org-journal-file-format "%Y%m%U"). This way, on the second day onwards until the next weeks starts, new entries go to the same file (20160101), which is almost what I want. But this does not automatically give me a new date heading. So unless I add it manually, I end up with this:

* Monday, 01/04/16
** 10:28 Company meeting
Endless discussions about projects. Not much progress
** 10:30 Another company meeting
Same as yesterday.

I guess this is a feature request, unless you can suggest other settings to try?

Hi,

Just noticed after last melpa update that the org-journal default path overrides the user set path after update. I am not sure this is an issue to post here (never interacted like this before) - I thought I'd signal about it; it would be nice if somehow an update would not require ulterior user interaction regarding custom path settings - if possible.

I can no longer make new journal entries

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function org-journal-new-entry) (org-journal-new-entry) debugger-may-continue = t inhibit-redisplay = nil inhibit-debugger = t inhibit-changing-match-data = nil eval((org-journal-new-entry) nil) [no locals] eval-expression((org-journal-new-entry)) debug-on-error = t

I get these warnings if I byte-compile the .el
`Compiling file /Users/AbuDavid/personal/dotFiles/privatEmacsLayrs/org-journal/org-journal.el at Sun Oct 2 01:59:57 2016

In org-journal-new-entry:
org-journal.el:286:12:Warning: ‘hide-sublevels’ is an obsolete function (as of
25.1); use ‘outline-hide-sublevels’ instead.
org-journal.el:287:10:Warning: ‘show-all’ is an obsolete function (as of
25.1); use ‘outline-show-all’ instead.
org-journal.el:291:10:Warning: ‘show-entry’ is an obsolete function (as of
25.1); use ‘outline-show-entry’ instead.

In org-journal-search-follow-link-action:
org-journal.el:706:6:Warning: ‘show-all’ is an obsolete function (as of 25.1);
use ‘outline-show-all’ instead.
`

This could be implemented as

• an automatic function of org-journal-new-entry
• a separate interactive function invokable on arbitrary headlines

Personally, I lean towards the first proposition. If a customizable option is set, move TODOs from the previous day to the current day on when creating the current day's entry.

I use org-journal mostly as my first point when I need to write down something out of my mind. So I don't need to care about first, I can always refile the stuff later. A lot of my entries I make over the day are TODO items:

* Monday, 13. Jul 2015

** 08:15 some thoughts...
** TODO 10:23 something i have todo
SCHEDULED: <2015-07-17 Fri>

Now all of them start with a time which is exactly what I want but when I take a look in my agenda, this time is used as the timestamp for scheduled. Same happens, if I would define a deadline before.

Friday 17 July 2015
JOURNAL:        10:23......... Scheduled: TODO something i have todo

I don't like this behaviour, because this is wrong. Just because I started a journal entry on 10:23 and scheduled the task some days later, doesn't mean this is the time I'm gonna work on this task. I schedule a lot of tasks this way, without an exact time, this is just how my workflow looks. I don't need always a time for my tasks. The only workaround so far is, to remove the timestamp from the beginning of the journal entry or define a timestamp for the scheduled/deadline date as well.

Idk, maybe this is the default behaviour how orgmode works or is there something wrong with org-journal? Thanks for help! 😽

I've been using org-journal for quite a long time now. Recently I realised that it has a fancy new feature I really missed ("carry over", to be precise) mostly because current README is a bit messy.

How about cleaning things up a bit? I can do it myself in a PR if @bastibe agrees here with me.

As opposed to altering org-agenda-file-regexp (which seems more likely to have side effects and be error prone in installation) I would like to have the option of simply defining an org-journal-file-suffix to be ".org". The current behavior could be achieved by leaving it undefined.

I know org mode has a global todo list, but that's kind of messy*. Is there a way to get new journal entries to carry over TODOs from the previous day? IE, when a new journal entry is created, it checks the last journal entry, and copies any headers marked TODO. Because it only checks the previous day, marking the entry as done or removing it on the current day would prevent it from being carried over.

I'm having trouble with the (`[^.]..org'|[0-9]+) regex example mentioned on the wiki. It keeps finding my autosaves and thus listing every TODO entry twice.

Hi bastide,

Very useful mode for me. Thanks.

Would be very cool if it was possible to customize the file format (for instance YYYY-MM-DD.txt) and the structure of the journal (but I'm not able to programm anything). For instance, I would prefer a structure like that:

 #+TITLE: 06/04/13
 * 10:28 Company meeting

If you enable encryption and use the default journal filename format then Emacs will throw an error because the journal buffer doesn't have org mode enabled and it uses org-set-tags-to here. org-set-tags-to relies on org buffer-local variable which since org-mode is not on is not initialized properly.

I suppose the best fix would be to enable org-mode when opening/creating/operating on journal files. Currently I fixed it by changing org-journal-file-format to %Y-%m-%d.org (I wanted that anyway so it's fine for me).

I'm trying to pull To-do's from my agenda files which included my journal directory, but I'm getting the error "Agenda file /home/will/Journal/20131223 is not in `org-mode' When I scroll through the journal files that are loaded into buffers, I see that all of them are in fundamental mode rather than Journal mode for some reason.

Relevant part of emacs config:

    (require 'cl)
    (require 'org-journal)
    (add-to-list 'org-agenda-files (expand-file-name "~/Journal"))
    (setq org-agenda-file-regexp "\\`[^.].*\\.org\\'\\|[0-9]+")

I manually added the change that ramLlama authored to org-journal.el and now when I try to get a full agenda, all of the journal files are correctly loaded in Journal mode, but I still get the error that they're not in `org-mode'.

Is it possible to append a .txt file format at the end of each journal file? How do one go about doing that?

Oh, BTW, do you use the search feature? At some point I realised I use it as a way to build reports on things done, not done etc, but it's a bit lacking here.

So, I started wondering if some kind of a reporting framework might be interesting, similar to the org-mode agenda, but concentrating on the journal side of things.
— @vkazanov #70 (comment)

I do use the search feature, though mostly for full-text searches in the entry bodies, e.g. for keywords like accounting references or database logins.

It would be interesting to be able to do structured searches. Maybe to include/exclude certain tags or flags or only search in headlines. Also, more structured results would be interesting. Search results could include complete subtrees instead of individual lines, kind of like the carry-over feature moves whole subtrees to new entries.

However, the reason the current searches are fast (and the agenda is slower) is that the agenda parses every file in org-mode, while our search searches through the files in fundamental-mode. I fear that true org-aware searches could be significantly slower. Then again, maybe this is not important as long as searches can be restricted to certain months or years.

This is annoying because the days are in the right, chronological order, see example:

Monday, 04.05.2015 ** 16:30 2️⃣⬇️
Monday, 04.05.2015 ** 10:00
Monday, 04.05.2015 ** 08:07 1️⃣⬆️
Tuesday, 05.05.2015 ** 14:00 3️⃣⬇️
Tuesday, 05.05.2015 ** 12:08
Tuesday, 05.05.2015 ** 09:00
Tuesday, 05.05.2015 ** 08:30 2️⃣⬆️
Wednesday, 06.05.2015 ** 14:45 4️⃣⬇️
Wednesday, 06.05.2015 ** 14:30
Wednesday, 06.05.2015 ** 07:39 3️⃣⬆️
Thursday, 07.05.2015 ** 15:00 5️⃣⬇️
Thursday, 07.05.2015 ** 14:00
Thursday, 07.05.2015 ** 11:30
Thursday, 07.05.2015 ** 10:00
Thursday, 07.05.2015 ** 08:09 4️⃣⬆️

Follow the numbers and arrows and you'll see what I mean...

It would be much nicer if each day's first entry would follow the previous day's last entry.

Hi! I'd like to add your package to MELPA, but there's already an established journal.el dating from 2005: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/journal.el

Would you consider renaming your package? Possible alternative names might include simple-journal or org-journal.

Cheers,

-Steve

Somewhat minor, but org-journal (requires 'cl) to be able to open a journal entry from the calendar. Without it, from calendar view if I select a day with an associated journal entry, I get the following error in Backtrace

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function caddr)
(caddr calendar-date)
(encode-time 0 0 0 (cadr calendar-date) (car calendar-date) (caddr calendar-date))
org-journal-calendar-date->time((1 27 2014))
(let* ((time (org-journal-calendar-date->time (calendar-cursor-to-date t event))) (org-journal-file (concat org-journal-dir (format-time-string org-journal-file-format time)))) (if (file-exists-p org-journal-file) (progn (view-file-other-window org-journal-file) (set (make-local-variable (quote org-hide-emphasis-markers)) t) (org-show-subtree)) (message "No journal entry for this date.")))
org-journal-read-entry(nil 106)
call-interactively(org-journal-read-entry nil nil)

Whenever org-journal updates, it breaks my ability to schedule tasks until I modify the source code. I understand that it may be possible to use customize, but I really hate the way it just haphazardly dumps random crap into my init file (I have a nicely organized, literate init file and customize just shits on it). Would it be possible to either name the set function or is there some way I can call the unnamed set function?

When I hit C-c C-j to create a new entry on my journal, the first thing I always have to do, is to skip to the end of the line before I start writing. I know, not a big issue but I would prefer the cursor position right after the time so I can skip C-e.

When viewing an entry using j in the calendar, the entry is opened in view-mode. You can view the previous/next entry from there using C-c b and C-c f. view-mode is supposed to stay active when doing that. However, C-c b/C-c f only stays in view-mode once or twice. After one or two C-c f/b, view-mode turns off.

C-c f/b call the functions org-journal-open-next-entry, org-journal-open-previous-entry.

Those functions have this code in there:

(if view-mode
    (view-file filename)
  (find-file filename))

I suppose this fails after two iterations for some reason.

This option would be helpful for those who work late nights past midnight and want journal entries to be logged on the journal for the date before midnight. Org-mode already provides support for extending today, so maybe have an option to toggle whether to use that time or go with the default of midnight?

Hey there, me again! 😺

Would be nice to see a sample configuration in the readme. Most of us dont even know how to write elisp but still want to use the power of emacs and orgmode. This would be really helpful so I just can go here and c/p and change what i want. Maybe from defaults.

Happy easter! 🐰

I have just started to get this error on an Ubuntu Trusty machine. My Arch computers work fine. I can trigger the error by trying to schedule a date in an org file (Ctrl-S). Backtrace appended:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-function org-journal-get-list)
org-journal-get-list()
run-hooks(calendar-initial-window-hook)
calendar-basic-setup(nil)
calendar()
org-read-date(nil to-time nil nil nil nil)
byte-code("�\306>\203L \203� ;\203L\307\310 "\203L\212\311\312!\210\212\313 \210)\314��\315�\316=\203/\f\2020 �\312#\203K\317\320!�\321\322\323\n!\"�3\n\205I\324\n!�4+�\203t ;\203d\321\322\325 �3\326�3!#\"\202s \206s\327\314\330\314\211�3�4&��\212\214~\210\311\312!\210\314y\210n\204\206\331c\210�5\312�6\332�!)\262�\203*�\333\314w\210�\203\243��7B\202\245�7\314�8\211�9\203&��9@�8\212\315\334\335�8\336\"\203\303�:\202\340\335�8\337\"\203\317 \202\340\335�8\316\"\203\333\f\202\340\340\341�8\"P\342 \312#\203��\343\344!\210\332\345!\203\366\343\344!\210�\204���8\336=\203��\212\346 \210\332\347!\203��\350\351!|\210))\332\352!\203��\343\344!\210�9A\211�9\204\256_\202H��\2046�\353\354\314"\210\202H�\355\331!\210\356u\210�;\203H�\357\360 T!\210�\205\233�\335�\336"\203X��<\202t�\335�\337"\203d��=\202t�\335�\316"\203p��>\202t�\340\341�"\361\261�\210\362 �?\206\207��\336=\205\207��@�\336=\314\211�AC&��l\204\231�\361c\210\n)_\207" [what time ts end org-scheduled-time-regexp org-deadline-time-regexp (scheduled deadline) string-match "^[-+]+[0-9]" org-back-to-heading t outline-next-heading nil re-search-forward scheduled match-string 1 apply encode-time org-parse-time-string org-get-compact-tod org-read-date-analyze decode-time org-read-date to-time "\n" looking-at " " " " eql closed deadline error "Invalid planning type: %s" line-end-position replace-match "" "--+<[^>]+>" beginning-of-line "[ ]$" line-beginning-position 2 "[ ]+" throw exit insert-before-markers -1 org-indent-to-column org-outline-level " " ...] 8)
org-add-planning-info(scheduled nil closed)
org-schedule(nil)
call-interactively(org-schedule nil nil)

I followed the instructions to add all those calendar/journal files to org-agenda. But for some reason I need to have previously have opened one. If I call org-agenda as soon as I start emacs I get the message
org-agenda-get-day-entries: Agenda file /home/oscar/Dropbox/org/journal/20150819 is not in org-mode'`

When I type C-c a a, this message appear in minibuffer:
Agenda file /mnt/hgfs/iemacs/journal/20140707 is not in `org-mode'

There are some files like:20140707 20140708 20140709... In journal directory .
When I change file name to 20140707.org,the message show 20140708 is not in org-mode'.When I change file name to 20140708.org,the message show 20140709 is not inorg-mode'...seem org-journal do not know file type.

Just installed on a new machine, org journal works but got some warnings during installation from elpa:

In org-journal-update-auto-mode-alist:
org-journal.el:62:27:Warning: reference to free variable
    `org-journal-file-pattern'

In org-journal-read-or-display-entry:
org-journal.el:412:23:Warning: assignment to free variable `view-exit-action'

When my config contains the setting:

(setq org-journal-time-prefix "")

I get the error:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument number-or-marker-p nil)
  hide-sublevels(nil)
  org-journal-new-entry(nil)
  call-interactively(org-journal-new-entry nil nil)
  command-execute(org-journal-new-entry)

This occurs with emacs -Q and my normal config. This seems like a bug, but I might be missing something. This is with Emacs 24.5.1 on El Capitan and org-journal 20160427.618 on Melpa.

Is it possible to make an org-capture template that matches the settings of org-journal?

There seems to be some feature overlap between both packages, but I'm not enough of an elisper to tackle that…

Hi! Thanks for working on org-journal. I noticed that you bind C-c f, C-c b, and C-c j by default. Since C-c keybindings are reserved for the user, would you consider converting these to suggested keybindings in the documentation, or define something like a (defun org-journal-setup () ...) that people can call if they want? Thank you!

I get an error with the order as given (file-pattern after dir)
Error goes away if I interchange the order

I can't enter a new entry from a org-mode buffer, as in org-mode C-c-C-j is bind to org-goto. Defining (global-set-key (kbd "C-c-C-j") 'org-journal-new-entry) in my .emacs file does not work.
(I might missing something as I am an emacs newbie...)

Hi. I appreciate org-journal and have been using it on a regular bases for about 6 months now. Very good package. I would like to have separate journals, one for my personal stuff and another for work stuff. What would be necessary to make it happen?

Not sure what exactly to do about this, but org-mode uses C-c C-j to invoke org-goto, so maybe org-journal should disable that key binding?

Right now when I use C-c C-j the journal opens up in a new split window. The ability to get a journal entry with one keystroke is convenient, but I don't really need a new window, and honestly it would be even more convenient if emacs opened straight into a journal instead of displaying the scratch buffer.

Is this feature supported, and if not, how would I go about adding it?

Encryption still not working . Here is my configuration:

(setq org-journal-dir "~/wb/journal")
(setq org-journal-file-format "%Y%m%d.org") 
(setq org-journal-enable-encryption t)    

If I just added

(setq org-journal-enable-encryption t) 

and do not change other settings , Encryption worked well.
Version Info:

GNU Emacs 24.5.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin14.1.0)  
Org-mode version 8.2.10 (release_8.2.10 @ /opt/local/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/org/)
Mac OSX 10.10.3  with gnupg (gpg) command installed

Hi bastibe! Thanks for sharing this awesome plugin!

However, there is one thing that I still miss. I loved the Oh life. What Oh Life was doing, is asking me via mail at the end of every week (or at the end of every day, if you want that) how my week was going. I reply it with the mail, and then on the site I see a log sorted on date where I could look up how I experiened my week on week 27 in 2014 for example. It gave me so much insight.

So I'm wondering if it's something that Emacs could ask in the input buffer, when it's the end of the week and there is no log yet?

It would be so great!

Thanks in advance for your answer.

I wanted to list all items of a week, so I naively entered "return" at the "search:" prompt.

Emacs started to eat all my computer's CPU resources and had to be killed in the end.

I wondered how it is possible to get the full list of entries for a time period
(I work around it now with a search for "**" as it begins each entry...)

I am using org-journal-mode. I have created .dir-locals.el in my ~/Documents/journal directory and it gets correctly applied if I open a file the usual way. However, if I hit the C-xC-j to add a new entry and the entry is in a new day, the opened buffer does not have the modifications I apply through .dir-locals.el.

Can I make it recognize and process .dir-locals.el for new day journal entry buffers?

My .dir-locals.el:

((nil
  (fill-column . 79)
  (indent-tabs-mode)
  (show-trailing-whitespace . t)
  (whitespace-style face trailing lines-tail space-before-tab indentation empty)
  (whitespace-newline . t))
 (org-journal-mode
  (typo-language . "Czech")
  (typo-mode . t)
  (ispell-local-dictionary . "czech")
  (flyspell-mode . t)
  (whitespace-action warn-read-only auto-cleanup)))

(cf. http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/14247/org-journal-mode-new-entry-ignores-dir-locals-el)

The reason for this is that org-journal calls

(add-hook 'calendar-today-visible-hook 'org-journal-mark-entries)
(add-hook 'calendar-today-invisible-hook 'org-journal-mark-entries)

when it is loaded.

Then org-journal-mark-entries calls (indirectly) org-journal-dir-check-or-create, which asks me if I want to create the directory. Since I don't want (it's loaded when I need it only), then the whole call to calendar fails.

My workaround is to have my own function which calls

(remove-hook 'calendar-today-visible-hook 'org-journal-mark-entries)
(remove-hook 'calendar-today-invisible-hook 'org-journal-mark-entries)

when I don't have the org-journal-dir loaded, but it would be nice if org-journal would not overwrite my preferences regarding the calendar hooks.

At some point I realized that basic calendar intergration is not enough for the journal - manually searching dozens of files just does not scale very well. Agenda-based search does not scale to dozens of files too.

One option is to use generic Emacs tools, but this does not allow for smart queries such as "journal entries with the tag 'tag' during the previous week".

So, I am working on specialized search system for the org-journal. Currently my code is mostly tag-based (queries like "find entries with the following tags" are possible).

I am considering other, more powerful, means of searching (such as "find entries with a given text over a given period").

The question is: what do you, the creator of the package, use for searching and categorizing journal entries? This would help to adapt my code to your needs too.

How do I insert a new line in org-journal-date-prefix? I tried %n and ~n but one of them only works in org-journal-date-format. I would like to have following structure in my journal files:

#+TITLE: (blank for no title)
#+OPTIONS: num:nil toc:nil

* Sat, 06/06/2015

Thank you for this great extension!

I really like it so far, but there is a problem I dont know how to solve.

I would like to add another entry in my current open journal file. But C-c C-j will not work then, instead org-goto will open. The only way to add a new entry then, is to change the buffer to another file and hit C-c C-j again.

Any workaround or is this the supposed way of org-journal?

Thanks a lot!

There was a recent question on stackexchange about an error with org-journal.
I suspect that it does not work with emacs version 23.1.
Can you confirm this?

It would be nice to add a way to disable globally binding C-c C-j in case the user wants to use those keys for something else, say, switching to line mode in term-mode.

Getting the following in my compile-log:

Leaving directory ‘~/’

Compiling file /Users/Simon/.emacs.d/elpa/org-journal-20160907.621/org-journal.el at Sun Oct 16 13:31:28 2016
Entering directory ‘/Users/Simon/.emacs.d/elpa/org-journal-20160907.621/’

Compiling no file at Sun Oct 16 13:31:29 2016
Warning (bytecomp): ‘hide-sublevels’ is an obsolete function (as of 25.1); use ‘outline-hide-sublevels’ instead.
Warning (bytecomp): ‘show-all’ is an obsolete function (as of 25.1); use ‘outline-show-all’ instead.
Warning (bytecomp): ‘show-entry’ is an obsolete function (as of 25.1); use ‘outline-show-entry’ instead.
Warning (bytecomp): ‘show-all’ is an obsolete function (as of 25.1); use ‘outline-show-all’ instead.