5.4 Priorities

If you use Org mode extensively, you may end up enough TODO items that it starts to make sense to prioritize them. Prioritizing can be done by placing a priority cookie into the headline of a TODO item, like this

     *** TODO [#A] Write letter to Sam Fortune

By default, Org mode supports three priorities: ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. ‘A’ is the highest priority. An entry without a cookie is treated as priority ‘B’. Priorities make a difference only in the agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda); outside the agenda, they have no inherent meaning to Org mode.

Priorities can be attached to any outline tree entries; they do not need to be TODO items.

C-c ,

Set the priority of the current headline. The command prompts for a priority character ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’. When you press <SPC> instead, the priority cookie is removed from the headline. The priorities can also be changed “remotely” from the timeline and agenda buffer with the , command (see Agenda commands).

S-<up>

S-<down>

Increase/decrease priority of current headline¹. Note that these keys are also used to modify timestamps (see Creating timestamps). See also Conflicts, for a discussion of the interaction with shift-selection-mode.

You can change the range of allowed priorities by setting the variables org-highest-priority, org-lowest-priority, and org-default-priority. For an individual buffer, you may set these values (highest, lowest, default) like this (please make sure that the highest priority is earlier in the alphabet than the lowest priority):

     #+PRIORITIES: A C B