Only include tasks created before the current note

[f-macfarlane95]

Is there any way to list only tasks that were created prior to the note's creation? I.e., not have all my new tasks be populated inside every old daily note (as I am using them as a sort of logbook).

Potentially something along the lines of:

created before <% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD") %>

which is similar to tracking the tasks completed in a day with:

done on <% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD") %>

Any pointers or alternative solutions would be appreciated.
Thanks.

[claremacrae]

Hi, no, there isn't a way to do this currently. Before this could be done, there would need to be a way to record the creation date of tasks. There have been a lot of similar requests for that, but it has not yet been implemented.

I recommend reading through the Ideas hit by the link above, and subscribing and up-voting ones you would find helpful.

[josephcrawfordSRH]

@claremacrae Tasks now have a creation date, is there a way to do this? I am looking to only show a list of incomplete tasks on my daily note but do not want to include the tasks that are outlined in that daily note. Currently when I do the following it shows the tasks for that day in the incomplete list which is not the outcome I want

```tasks
not done
path includes Journal/Daily```

Before migrating to the tasks plugin I was using the following query which worked fine but would not complete the tasks when I toggled the checkbox.

```dataview
TASK
FROM "Journal/Daily"
WHERE !completed
AND dateformat(file.ctime, "yyyy-MM-dd") < dateformat(this.file.day, "yyyy-MM-dd")
SORT file.day```

I would also like similar functionality for my weekly, monthly and annual templates as well.

[claremacrae]

To exclude tasks that are in the same file as the query, use:

path does not include {{query.file.path}}

Yes, the Filters page in the documentation shows how to do searches involving the created date.

And you can use that in your templates to ask whatever date-based searches you wish.

[claremacrae]

Created date has been released for some time. It has to be turned on in settings.

Its documentation links to the various instructions for filtering, sorting and grouping.
https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Getting+Started/Dates#Created%20date

[claremacrae]

@f-macfarlane95 - just wanted to make you have seen the above.

[josephcrawfordSRH]

@claremacrae the filters page shows how to do the filtering with static dates that you put in the query, the issue is that I will need to do something like created before file.date. I cannot use the method you showed above and say path does not include {{query.file.path}} because then it includes tasks from the future as well in past daily notes.

I see that I can do created before YYYY-MM-DD but I am struggling to figure out how in this tasks specific query I can get at the file date formatted like that.

Also for my weekly templates those are named like 2024-W10 so how can I also get at the task created date to format it like that and I can say it was created before Week 10 or to make it easier if I could get at the weekly files metadata it has a created date and that could be used as well.

Sorry I am still getting up to speed on all obsidian stuff so I am new and not understanding a lot of how this stuff works.

[claremacrae]

@josephcrawfordSRH - am happy to help, if you can supply some more info.

Please start a new Q&A, so we can avoid spamming the creator of this one.

And include the following

• How are the files containing the queries created?
• Manually?
• Or by a plugin - or plugins? If so, which plugin(s), and please give some (anonymised) examples of the template text you are using (as text for copying, not screenshot)

[claremacrae]

Thanks. Discussion continued in #2728...