org mode refile error

Question

Since some time (but I didn't change anything in .emacs), I have some errors with emacs's behaviour :

• Remember mode will not kill the temporary buffer on "Ctl-C Ctl-C"
• Orgmode will not refile any entry

Both operations complain with error "Not bookmark format"

I restored an old .emacs to make sure that I didn't mess it up but the error persists.

Where can I investigate to find out the problem ?

I have Emacs 24.2.1 since end of august.

The built in orgmode version is 7.8.11 (I see 7.9.2 is out ...)

Answer 1

It's always best to start debugging problems such as this by seeing if the problem still happens when you ignore your init file altogether - try starting emacs with --no-init-file and seeing if you still get the problem. If you don't then it's clearly something in your init file.

You can also get odd behaviour if you've got a local install of Org-mode in addition to the one bundled with Emacs itself - eg if you pull in a newer one through ELPA. If you have a local install through ELPA then you can try uninstalling the Org-mode package and trying again using the built-in Org-mode.

I have something similar to the following in my init file to make it switch to the ELPA-installed Org-mode to avoid such problems (this variant is untested so forgive me if it's not quite right):

(package-initialize)  ; load and initialise ELPA-installed packages
(org-reload)          ; restart Org-mode with the ELPA package