2.6.1 The ARCHIVE tag

A headline that is marked with the ARCHIVE tag (see Tags) stays at its location in the outline tree, but behaves in the following way:

• It does not open when you attempt to do so with a visibility cycling command (see Visibility cycling). You can force cycling archived subtrees with C-<TAB>, or by setting the option org-cycle-open-archived-trees. Also normal outline commands like show-all will open archived subtrees.
• During sparse tree construction (see Sparse trees), matches in archived subtrees are not exposed, unless you configure the option org-sparse-tree-open-archived-trees.
• During agenda view construction (see Agenda Views), the content of archived trees is ignored unless you configure the option org-agenda-skip-archived-trees, in which case these trees will always be included. In the agenda you can press the v key to get archives temporarily included.
• Archived trees are not exported (see Exporting), only the headline is. Configure the details using the variable org-export-with-archived-trees.

The following commands help managing the ARCHIVE tag:

C-c C-x a

Toggle the ARCHIVE tag for the current headline. When the tag is set, the headline changes to a shadowed face, and the subtree below it is hidden.

C-u C-c C-x a

Check if any direct children of the current headline should be archived. To do this, each subtree is checked for open TODO entries. If none are found, the command offers to set the ARCHIVE tag for the child. If the cursor is not on a headline when this command is invoked, the level 1 trees will be checked.

C-TAB

Cycle a tree even if it is tagged with ARCHIVE.