9.6.1 Moving a tree to the archive file

The most common archiving action is to move a project tree to another file, the archive file.

C-c C-x C-s  or short  C-c $     (org-archive-subtree)

Archive the subtree starting at the cursor position to the location given by org-archive-location.

C-u C-c C-x C-s

Check if any direct children of the current headline could be moved to the archive. To do this, each subtree is checked for open TODO entries. If none are found, the command offers to move it to the archive location. If the cursor is not on a headline when this command is invoked, the level 1 trees will be checked.

The default archive location is a file in the same directory as the current file, with the name derived by appending _archive to the current file name. You can also choose what heading to file archived items under, with the possibility to add them to a datetree in a file. For information and examples on how to specify the file and the heading, see the documentation string of the variable org-archive-location.

There is also an in-buffer option for setting this variable, for example⁹⁷:

#+ARCHIVE: %s_done::

If you would like to have a special ARCHIVE location for a single entry or a (sub)tree, give the entry an :ARCHIVE: property with the location as the value (see Properties and Columns).

When a subtree is moved, it receives a number of special properties that record context information like the file from where the entry came, its outline path the archiving time etc. Configure the variable org-archive-save-context-info to adjust the amount of information added.