How do you copy just the visible text from the folded state in an org-mode buffer?

Question

How to copy org file to other buffer, if source is:

** TODO task #1
   - some text for task #1
** TODO task #2 
   - some text for task #2

but when you collapse all tasks it will look like

** TODO task #1 ...
** TODO task #2 ...

I want to mark all tasks and copy to another buffer and it must look like a second variant. Don't include texts for tasks which stored inside every task. How i can to do it ?

Answer 1

As per Hendy's comment, in current versions of org-mode you use org-copy-visible (C-c C-x v) to copy the visible content of the current region to the kill ring. (C-x h can be used first to mark the entire buffer, as usual.)

In addition, note that the export dispatch menu (C-x C-e) provides a "Visible only" switch, if you want to export that content to a different format.

For older versions of org-mode, the original answer below should still apply:

---

M-x org-export-visible RET SPC will copy only the currently-visible text of your org-mode buffer into a new buffer.

org-export-visible is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `org-exp.el'.

(org-export-visible TYPE ARG)

Create a copy of the visible part of the current buffer, and export it. The copy is created in a temporary buffer and removed after use. TYPE is the final key (as a string) that also select the export command in the `C-c C-e' export dispatcher. As a special case, if the you type SPC at the prompt, the temporary org-mode file will not be removed but presented to you so that you can continue to use it. The prefix arg ARG is passed through to the exporting command.

If you wanted to bind that (to C-c o in this example), you could use the following:

(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'my-org-mode-hook)
(defun my-org-mode-hook ()
  "Custom behaviours when entering org-mode."
  (local-set-key (kbd "C-c o") (function (lambda () (interactive)
                                           (org-export-visible ?\s nil)))))

Answer 2

There is org-copy-visible, that should do exactly what you need.

Answer 3

Try M-x org-todo-list (or C-c a t). This brings up a list of TODO entries (in the files listed in agenda file list) in the *Org Agenda* buffer.

You may need to add your current file to the agenda file list. From org-agenda documentation:

If the current buffer is in Org-mode and visiting a file, you can also first press '<' once to indicate that the agenda should be temporarily (until the next use of C-c a) restricted to the current file. Pressing '<' twice means to restrict to the current subtree or region (if active).