2.7 Plain lists

Within an entry of the outline tree, hand-formatted lists can provide additional structure. They also provide a way to create lists of checkboxes (see Checkboxes). Org supports editing such lists, and the HTML exporter (see Exporting) parses and formats them.

Org knows ordered lists, unordered lists, and description lists.

• Unordered list items start with ‘-’, ‘+’, or ‘*’ as bullets.
• Ordered list items start with ‘1.’ or ‘1)’.
• Description list use ‘ :: ’ to separate the term from the description.

Items belonging to the same list must have the same indentation on the first line. An item ends before the next line that is indented like its bullet/number, or less. A list ends when all items are closed, or before two blank lines. An example:

     ** Lord of the Rings
        My favorite scenes are (in this order)
        1. The attack of the Rohirrim
        2. Eowyn's fight with the witch king
           + this was already my favorite scene in the book
           + I really like Miranda Otto.
        Important actors in this film are:
        - Elijah Wood :: He plays Frodo
        - Sean Austin :: He plays Sam, Frodo's friend.

The following commands act on items when the cursor is in the first line of an item (the line with the bullet or number).

<TAB>

Items can be folded just like headline levels.

M-<RET>

Insert new item at current level. With a prefix argument, force a new heading (see Structure editing).

M-S-<RET>

Insert a new item with a checkbox (see Checkboxes).

M-S-<up>/<down>

Move the item including subitems up/down (swap with previous/next item of same indentation). If the list is ordered, renumbering is automatic.

M-<left>/M-<right>

Decrease/increase the indentation of an item, leaving children alone.

M-S-<left>/<right>

Decrease/increase the indentation of the item, including subitems.

C-c C-c

If there is a checkbox (see Checkboxes) in the item line, toggle the state of the checkbox. Also verify bullets and indentation consistency in the whole list.

C-c -

Cycle the entire list level through the different itemize/enumerate bullets (‘-’, ‘+’, ‘*’, ‘1.’, ‘1)’).