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### 1.3 Activation

Add the following lines to your `.emacs` file. The last three lines define global keys for the commands `org-store-link`, `org-agenda`, and `org-iswitchb`—please choose suitable keys yourself.

         ;; The following lines are always needed.  Choose your own keys.
         (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.org\\'" . org-mode))
         (global-set-key "\C-cl" 'org-store-link)
         (global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
         (global-set-key "\C-cb" 'org-iswitchb)

Furthermore, you must activate `font-lock-mode` in Org buffers, because significant functionality depends on font-locking being active. You can do this with either one of the following two lines (XEmacs users must use the second option):

         (global-font-lock-mode 1)                     ; for all buffers
         (add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)  ; Org buffers only

With this setup, all files with extension ‘`.org`’ will be put into Org-mode. As an alternative, make the first line of a file look like this:

         MY PROJECTS    -*- mode: org; -*-

which will select Org-mode for this buffer no matter what the file's name is. See also the variable `org-insert-mode-line-in-empty-file`.

Many commands in Org work on the region if the region is active. To make use of this, you need to have `transient-mark-mode` (`zmacs-regions` in XEmacs) turned on. In Emacs 23 this is the default, in Emacs 22 you need to do this yourself with

         (transient-mark-mode 1)

If you do not like `transient-mark-mode`, you can create an active region by using the mouse to select a region, or pressing `C-<SPC>` twice before moving the cursor.