How to make all org-files under a folder added in agenda-list automatically?

Question

I am using org-mode to write notes and org-agenda to organize all notes, especially to search some info. by keyword or tag.

C-c a m can search some files by tag inputed, C-c a s by keyword ,those functions from org-agenda are well to utilize, however, I need to add org-file into the agenda-list by hand.

I added some codes into .emacs, such as

(setq org-agenda-files (list "path/folder/*.org"))

or

(setq org-agenda-files (file-expand-wildcards "path/folder/*.org"))

but, both failed to add files under the folder specified into agenda-list automatically, so I can't search keyword or tag among those org-files, unless that I open a org-file and type C-c [ to add it into agenda-list.

How can I make all org-files under a folder automatically added in agenda?

Answer 1

Just naming the directory should be enough. For example this works for me very well:

(setq org-agenda-files '("~/org"))

Also take a look at org-agenda-text-search-extra-files; it lets you add extra files included only in text searches. A typical value might be,

(setq org-agenda-text-search-extra-files
      '(agenda-archives
        "~/org/subdir/textfile1.txt"
        "~/org/subdir/textfile1.txt"))

Caveat: If you add a file to the directory after you have started Emacs, it will not be included.

Edit: (2018) To include all files with a certain extension in the extra files list you can try the following function I wrote sometime back (a more recent version might be available here).

;; recursively find .org files in provided directory
;; modified from an Emacs Lisp Intro example
(defun sa-find-org-file-recursively (&optional directory filext)
  "Return .org and .org_archive files recursively from DIRECTORY.
If FILEXT is provided, return files with extension FILEXT instead."
  (interactive "DDirectory: ")
  (let* (org-file-list
         (case-fold-search t)         ; filesystems are case sensitive
         (file-name-regex "^[^.#].*") ; exclude dot, autosave, and backupfiles
         (filext (or filext "org$\\\|org_archive"))
         (fileregex (format "%s\\.\\(%s$\\)" file-name-regex filext))
         (cur-dir-list (directory-files directory t file-name-regex)))
    ;; loop over directory listing
    (dolist (file-or-dir cur-dir-list org-file-list) ; returns org-file-list
      (cond
       ((file-regular-p file-or-dir)             ; regular files
        (if (string-match fileregex file-or-dir) ; org files
            (add-to-list 'org-file-list file-or-dir)))
       ((file-directory-p file-or-dir)
        (dolist (org-file (sa-find-org-file-recursively file-or-dir filext)
                          org-file-list) ; add files found to result
          (add-to-list 'org-file-list org-file)))))))

You can use it like this:

(setq org-agenda-text-search-extra-files
      (append (sa-find-org-file-recursively "~/org/dir1/" "txt")
              (sa-find-org-file-recursively "~/org/dir2/" "tex")))

Edit: (2019) As mentioned in the answer by @mingwei-zhang and the comment by @xiaobing, find-lisp-find-files from find-lisp and directory-files-recursively also provides this functionality. However, please note in these cases the file name argument is a (greedy) regex. So something like (directory-files-recursively "~/my-dir" "org") will give you all Org files including backup files (*.org~). To include only *.org files, you may use (directory-files-recursively "~/my-dir" "org$").