Add wiki-style links to existing notes

How To
1

org-roam lets you define :ROAM_ALIASES: that can be used as prefabricated links to your existing notes. But what if we’d like to add wiki-style notes to existing notes that uses a generic description term such as:

This is a project to implement the Zettelkasten Method to my own note-taking system, based on Söken Ahren's excellent [[id:c2523143-24d0-4600-92ff-12c599a89a3a][introduction]] to how and why it works. [fn:fa514b4cb667f1e: See cite:ahrensHowTakeSmart2017]

Linked to file:

:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       c2523143-24d0-4600-92ff-12c599a89a3a
:ROAM_REFS: cite:ahrensHowTakeSmart2017
:ROAM_ALIASES: "How to take Smart Notes"
:END:
#+title: How to take smart notes: one simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking--for students, academics and nonfiction book writers
#+filetags: WORKFLOW reading learning efficiency

org-roam-node-insert can only insert a link to your note with your predefined ROAM_ALIAS as its description - in this case, “How to take Smart Notes”.

Clicking on the reference link, cite:ahrensHowTakeSmart2017 doesn’t bring me to my literature note either.

To get this link [[id:c2523143-24d0-4600-92ff-12c599a89a3a][introduction]], I somehow have to org-roam-node-find to the specific file, then do org-store-link on its file-level property id, then org-insert-link back at the position where the link is needed, which is somewhat tedious.

2

Sorry it’s not clear what you would like to.

What is your question?

Is this what you would like to do?

  • Type “introduction”
  • Select the text (mark the region)
  • Call org-roam-node-insert to insert a node
3

Yes, but that just creates a new note with the title “introduction” for me. I would like “introduction” to link to an existing note with the id c2523143-24d0-4600-92ff-12c599a89a3a.

4

It works as you would like on my end.
What’s your completion framework (helm, ivy, etc. etc.).
My guess is that you need to choose an existing note by pressing TAB, instead of just typing the title only.

2 Likes
5

Oh, silly me. The choices for existing notes have been filtered off by the alien keyword.

I use helm, by the way. Thanks for the help.

1 Like