26.5.3 Commands Displaying Diary Entries

Once you have created a ~/diary file, you can use the calendar to view it. You can also view today’s events outside of Calendar mode.

d

Display all diary entries for the selected date (view-diary-entries).

Button2 Diary

Display all diary entries for the date you click on.

s

Display the entire diary file (show-all-diary-entries).

m

Mark all visible dates that have diary entries (mark-diary-entries).

u

Unmark the calendar window (calendar-unmark).

M-x print-diary-entries

Print hard copy of the diary display as it appears.

M-x diary

Display all diary entries for today’s date.

M-x diary-mail-entries

Mail yourself email reminders about upcoming diary entries.

Displaying the diary entries with d shows in a separate window the diary entries for the selected date in the calendar. The mode line of the new window shows the date of the diary entries and any holidays that fall on that date. If you specify a numeric argument with d, it shows all the diary entries for that many successive days. Thus, 2 d displays all the entries for the selected date and for the following day.

Another way to display the diary entries for a date is to click Button2 on the date, and then choose Diary from the menu that appears.

To get a broader view of which days are mentioned in the diary, use the m command. This displays the dates that have diary entries in a different face (or places a ‘+’ after these dates, if display with multiple faces is not available). The command applies both to the currently visible months and to other months that subsequently become visible by scrolling. To turn marking off and erase the current marks, type u, which also turns off holiday marks (see Holidays).

To see the full diary file, rather than just some of the entries, use the s command.

Display of selected diary entries uses the selective display feature to hide entries that don’t apply.

The diary buffer as you see it is an illusion, so simply printing the buffer does not print what you see on your screen. There is a special command to print hard copy of the diary buffer as it appears; this command is M-x print-diary-entries. It sends the data directly to the printer. You can customize it like lpr-region (see Hardcopy).

The command M-x diary displays the diary entries for the current date, independently of the calendar display, and optionally for the next few days as well; the variable number-of-diary-entries specifies how many days to include (see Customization).

If you put (diary) in your init file, this automatically displays a window with the day’s diary entries, when you enter Emacs. See Init File. The mode line of the displayed window shows the date and any holidays that fall on that date.

Many users like to receive notice of events in their diary as email. To send such mail to yourself, use the command M-x diary-mail-entries. A prefix argument specifies how many days (starting with today) to check; otherwise, the variable diary-mail-days says how many days.