7.5.3 Capturing column view

Since column view is just an overlay over a buffer, it cannot be exported or printed directly. If you want to capture a column view, use a ‘columnview’ dynamic block (see Dynamic Blocks). The frame of this block looks like this:

* The column view
#+BEGIN: columnview :hlines 1 :id "label"

#+END:

This dynamic block has the following parameters:

‘:id’

This is the most important parameter. Column view is a feature that is often localized to a certain (sub)tree, and the capture block might be at a different location in the file. To identify the tree whose view to capture, you can use four values:

‘local’

Use the tree in which the capture block is located.

‘global’

Make a global view, including all headings in the file.

‘file:FILENAME’

Run column view at the top of the FILENAME file.

‘LABEL’

Call column view in the tree that has an ‘ID’ property with the value LABEL. You can use M-x org-id-copy to create a globally unique ID for the current entry and copy it to the kill-ring.

‘:match’

When set to a string, use this as a tags/property match filter to select only a subset of the headlines in the scope set by the :id parameter.

‘:hlines’

When t, insert an hline after every line. When a number N, insert an hline before each headline with level <= N.

‘:vlines’

When non-nil, force column groups to get vertical lines.

‘:maxlevel’

When set to a number, do not capture entries below this level.

‘:skip-empty-rows’

When non-nil, skip rows where the only non-empty specifier of the column view is ‘ITEM’.

‘:exclude-tags’

List of tags to exclude from column view table: entries with these tags will be excluded from the column view.

‘:indent’

When non-nil, indent each ‘ITEM’ field according to its level.

‘:format’

Specify a column attribute (see Column attributes) for the dynamic block.

The following commands insert or update the dynamic block:

org-columns-insert-dblock

Insert a dynamic block capturing a column view. Prompt for the scope or ID of the view.

This command can be invoked by calling org-dynamic-block-insert-dblock (C-c C-x x) and selecting “columnview” (see Dynamic Blocks).

C-c C-c C-c C-x C-u (org-dblock-update)

Update dynamic block at point. point needs to be in the ‘#+BEGIN’ line of the dynamic block.

C-u C-c C-x C-u (org-update-all-dblocks)

Update all dynamic blocks (see Dynamic Blocks). This is useful if you have several clock table blocks, column-capturing blocks or other dynamic blocks in a buffer.

You can add formulas to the column view table and you may add plotting instructions in front of the table—these survive an update of the block. If there is a ‘TBLFM’ keyword after the table, the table is recalculated automatically after an update.

An alternative way to capture and process property values into a table is provided by Eric Schulte’s ‘org-collector.el’, which is a contributed package⁵⁸. It provides a general API to collect properties from entries in a certain scope, and arbitrary Lisp expressions to process these values before inserting them into a table or a dynamic block.