How to make a SCHEDULED and DEADLINE'd todo only show up once in agenda-view in emacs org-mode

Question

In org mode, if you create a todo, and first assign it a DEADLINE, maybe a week in advance, then a few days later, get around to scheduling it, both the SCHEDULED todo and the DEADLINE todo show up in my agenda. How do I get rid of the DEADLINE item? It clutters up my agenda view.

Answer 1

There is a specific variable for that that was introduced in commit 8d6aa8f3 (2010-02-17). This should put it somewhere around version 6.35.

org-agenda-skip-deadline-prewarning-if-scheduled is a variable defined in `org-agenda.el'. Its value is nil

Documentation: Non-nil means skip deadline prewarning when entry is also scheduled. This will apply on all days where a prewarning for the deadline would be shown, but not at the day when the entry is actually due. On that day, the deadline will be shown anyway. This variable may be set to nil, t, or a number which will then give the number of days before the actual deadline when the prewarnings should resume. This can be used in a workflow where the first showing of the deadline will trigger you to schedule it, and then you don't want to be reminded of it because you will take care of it on the day when scheduled.

You can customize this variable.

I couldn't spot it in the manual however M-x apropos RET org-agenda-skip- does list it as well as other variables that offer similar sorts of filtering.