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I have several tasks in an org file, some of which which have an Effort property and some of which which don't.

** Example Task 1, with effort :PROPERTIES: :Effort: 1:30 :END: ** Example Task 2, without effort :PROPERTIES: :END:

When I run a match query in the agenda (C-c a m) and want to check by effort, this tutorial suggests the following. Suppose I want to match all todo tasks whose efforts are estimated to be less than 2 hours. I would do:

Match: +Effort<2/TODO

However, this also displays todo items which do not have an Effort property. (Example Task 2 would be shown along with Example Task 1.)

How can I make it so that having no Effort property results in not appearing in an Effort query?

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Just add a condition EFFORT>0 to the search.

For example if the current org-mode buffer contains

** Example Task 1, with effort :PROPERTIES: :Effort: 1:30 :END: ** Example Task 2, without effort :PROPERTIES: :END: ** Example Task 3, with effort :PROPERTIES: :Effort: 3:00 :END:

Then C-c a < m EFFORT>0+EFFORT<2 (the first < is to just restrict the search to the current buffer) returns

Headlines with TAGS match: EFFORT>0+EFFORT<2 Press ‘C-u r’ to search again with new search string b: Example Task 1, with effort

If you wish to search on efforts of the form 0:15 etc. then you should enclose all values in double quotes, e.g.

C-c a < m EFFORT>"0"+EFFORT<"0:30"
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  • Hmm... this seems to work for whole number efforts... but is there a way to search for fractional ones (like 0:15, 0:30, 0:45)? If I search for EFFORT>0+EFFORT<1, I get no results. Commented Oct 30, 2016 at 16:47
  • @wiuah Just add quotes - I have added a final example to demonstrate this. Commented Oct 31, 2016 at 8:12

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