2.8 Drawers

Sometimes you want to keep information associated with an entry, but you normally don't want to see it. For this, Org mode has drawers. Drawers need to be configured with the variable org-drawers¹. Drawers look like this:

     ** This is a headline
        Still outside the drawer
        :DRAWERNAME:
        This is inside the drawer.
        :END:
        After the drawer.

You can interactively insert drawers at point by calling org-insert-drawer, which is bound to <C-c C-x d>. With an active region, this command will put the region inside the drawer. With a prefix argument, this command calls org-insert-property-drawer and add a property drawer right below the current headline. Completion over drawer keywords is also possible using <M-TAB>.

Visibility cycling (see Visibility cycling) on the headline will hide and show the entry, but keep the drawer collapsed to a single line. In order to look inside the drawer, you need to move the cursor to the drawer line and press <TAB> there. Org mode uses the PROPERTIES drawer for storing properties (see Properties and Columns), and you can also arrange for state change notes (see Tracking TODO state changes) and clock times (see Clocking work time) to be stored in a drawer LOGBOOK. If you want to store a quick note in the LOGBOOK drawer, in a similar way to state changes, use

C-c C-z

Add a time-stamped note to the LOGBOOK drawer.