8.3.1 Inserting deadlines or schedules

The following commands allow you to quickly insert⁷⁴ a deadline or to schedule an item:

C-c C-d     (org-deadline)

Insert ‘DEADLINE’ keyword along with a stamp. The insertion will happen in the line directly following the headline. Any CLOSED timestamp will be removed. When called with a prefix arg, an existing deadline will be removed from the entry. Depending on the variable org-log-redeadline⁷⁵, a note will be taken when changing an existing deadline.

C-c C-s     (org-schedule)

Insert ‘SCHEDULED’ keyword along with a stamp. The insertion will happen in the line directly following the headline. Any CLOSED timestamp will be removed. When called with a prefix argument, remove the scheduling date from the entry. Depending on the variable org-log-reschedule⁷⁶, a note will be taken when changing an existing scheduling time.

C-c C-x C-k     (org-mark-entry-for-agenda-action)

Mark the current entry for agenda action. After you have marked the entry like this, you can open the agenda or the calendar to find an appropriate date. With the cursor on the selected date, press k s or k d to schedule the marked item.

C-c / d     (org-check-deadlines)

Create a sparse tree with all deadlines that are either past-due, or which will become due within org-deadline-warning-days. With C-u prefix, show all deadlines in the file. With a numeric prefix, check that many days. For example, C-1 C-c / d shows all deadlines due tomorrow.

C-c / b     (org-check-before-date)

Sparse tree for deadlines and scheduled items before a given date.

C-c / a     (org-check-after-date)

Sparse tree for deadlines and scheduled items after a given date.

Note that org-schedule and org-deadline supports setting the date by indicating a relative time: e.g., +1d will set the date to the next day after today, and –1w will set the date to the previous week before any current timestamp.