Mario Jason Braganza has a useful post that considers moving a headline node from one org file to another. His use case is moving items from his TODO file to his current task file as he acts on TODO items.
Org mode, of course, has an easy way of doing that. You can move nodes to another location from within the current file or to another file altogether using the org-refile command. It’s bound to Ctrl+c Ctrl+w so it’s easy to invoke.
The problem is that it can be a bit fiddly to set up. The reason for that is that you have to specify potential targets for the refiling. There are two aspects to that:
- Possible files to contain the refiled node
- Headings within the target file to contain the refiled node
Braganza explains how to set all this up. Oddly, he arrives at the exact configuration I have except that I consider more subheadings in the target file than he does. I’ve had it set up for so long I no longer remember configuring it. Lately, I’ve been using it more and more instead of just cutting and pasting nodes.
If you sometimes move nodes from your Org files and want to something move sensible than cutting and pasting, take a look at Braganza’s post to see how to set up org-refile.