How to make all org-files under a folder added in agenda-list automatically?

Question

I am using org-mode to write notes and org-agenda to organize all notes, especially to search some info. by keyword or tag.

C-c a m can search some files by tag inputed, C-c a s by keyword ,those functions from org-agenda are well to utilize, however, I need to add org-file into the agenda-list by hand.

I added some codes into .emacs, such as

(setq org-agenda-files (list "path/folder/*.org")) 

or

(setq org-agenda-files (file-expand-wildcards "path/folder/*.org")) 

but, both failed to add files under the folder specified into agenda-list automatically, so I can't search keyword or tag among those org-files, unless that I open a org-file and type C-c [ to add it into agenda-list.

How can I make all org-files under a folder automatically added in agenda?

Answer 1

There is a simpler way of doing recursive search of org files (courtesy @xiaobing):

(setq org-agenda-files (directory-files-recursively "~/org/" "\\.org$")) 

EDIT: You can also filter out certain directory from lookup by adding a array filter. Example, filtering out all org files in xxxx/xxx/daily/ directory:

(setq org-agenda-files        (seq-filter (lambda(x) (not (string-match "/daily/"(file-name-directory x))))         (directory-files-recursively "~/Notes/roam" "\\.org$")        )) 

For Emacs <25, you can use find-lisp-find-files:

(load-library "find-lisp") (setq org-agenda-files    (find-lisp-find-files "FOLDERNAME" "\.org$")) 

Answer 2

Just naming the directory should be enough. For example this works for me very well:

(setq org-agenda-files '("~/org")) 

Also take a look at org-agenda-text-search-extra-files; it lets you add extra files included only in text searches. A typical value might be,

(setq org-agenda-text-search-extra-files       '(agenda-archives         "~/org/subdir/textfile1.txt"         "~/org/subdir/textfile1.txt")) 

Caveat: If you add a file to the directory after you have started Emacs, it will not be included.

Edit: (2018) To include all files with a certain extension in the extra files list you can try the following function I wrote sometime back (a more recent version might be available here).

;; recursively find .org files in provided directory ;; modified from an Emacs Lisp Intro example (defun sa-find-org-file-recursively (&optional directory filext)   "Return .org and .org_archive files recursively from DIRECTORY. If FILEXT is provided, return files with extension FILEXT instead."   (interactive "DDirectory: ")   (let* (org-file-list          (case-fold-search t)         ; filesystems are case sensitive          (file-name-regex "^[^.#].*") ; exclude dot, autosave, and backupfiles          (filext (or filext "org$\\\|org_archive"))          (fileregex (format "%s\\.\\(%s$\\)" file-name-regex filext))          (cur-dir-list (directory-files directory t file-name-regex)))     ;; loop over directory listing     (dolist (file-or-dir cur-dir-list org-file-list) ; returns org-file-list       (cond        ((file-regular-p file-or-dir)             ; regular files         (if (string-match fileregex file-or-dir) ; org files             (add-to-list 'org-file-list file-or-dir)))        ((file-directory-p file-or-dir)         (dolist (org-file (sa-find-org-file-recursively file-or-dir filext)                           org-file-list) ; add files found to result           (add-to-list 'org-file-list org-file))))))) 

You can use it like this:

(setq org-agenda-text-search-extra-files       (append (sa-find-org-file-recursively "~/org/dir1/" "txt")               (sa-find-org-file-recursively "~/org/dir2/" "tex"))) 

Edit: (2019) As mentioned in the answer by @mingwei-zhang and the comment by @xiaobing, find-lisp-find-files from find-lisp and directory-files-recursively also provides this functionality. However, please note in these cases the file name argument is a (greedy) regex. So something like (directory-files-recursively "~/my-dir" "org") will give you all Org files including backup files (*.org~). To include only *.org files, you may use (directory-files-recursively "~/my-dir" "org$").