Priorities (The Org Manual)

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### 5.4 Priorities

If you use Org mode extensively, you may end up with 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 equivalent if it had priority ‘`B`’. Priorities make a difference only for sorting in the agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda); outside the agenda, they have no inherent meaning to Org mode. The cookies are displayed with the face defined by the variable `org-priority-faces`, which can be customized.

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

`C-c ,` (`org-priority`)

  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, if one is set, is removed from the headline. The priorities can also be changed “remotely” from the agenda buffer with the `,` command (see Agenda Commands).

`S-UP` (`org-priority-up`)
`S-DOWN` (`org-priority-down`)

  Increase/decrease the priority of the current headline46. 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.

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

#### Footnotes

### (46)

See also the option `org-priority-start-cycle-with-default`.

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