Closing items (The Org Manual)

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#### 5.3.1 Closing items

The most basic automatic logging is to keep track of when a certain TODO item was marked as done. This can be achieved with41

    (setq org-log-done 'time)

Then each time you turn an entry from a TODO (not-done) state into any of the DONE states, a line ‘`CLOSED: [timestamp]`’ is inserted just after the headline. If you turn the entry back into a TODO item through further state cycling, that line is removed again. If you turn the entry back to a non-TODO state (by pressing `C-c C-t SPC` for example), that line is also removed, unless you set `org-closed-keep-when-no-todo` to non-`nil`. If you want to record a note along with the timestamp, use42

    (setq org-log-done 'note)

You are then prompted for a note, and that note is stored below the entry with a ‘`Closing Note`’ heading.

#### Footnotes

### (41)

The corresponding in-buffer setting is: ‘`#+STARTUP: logdone`’.

### (42)

The corresponding in-buffer setting is: ‘`#+STARTUP: lognotedone`’.