Hi,

On Thu, Aug 15, 2019 at 9:50 AM Fraga, Eric <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> On Wednesday, 14 Aug 2019 at 15:57, Nick Dokos wrote:
> > "Fraga, Eric" <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> writes:
> >
> >> I have this setting in my Emacs initialization:
> >>
> >> (setq org-agenda-overriding-columns-format "%5TODO %TIMESTAMP %40ITEM
> %LOCATION %TAGS")
> >>
> >> HTH,
> >> eric
> >
> > Shouldn't you be using org-columns-default-format instead?
>
> No because it's about setting the columns format for the agenda view
> alone, not the format for normal org buffers.  My error was in using a
> deprecated variable; the actual variable is
> org-overriding-columns-format.
>
> The OP's post was actually about the documentation (which I
> misunderstood).
>

I have discussed this problem with Allen Li, who fixed a bug in the agenda
column setting a while ago.

I think what is missing to make this more transparent is a variable
`org-default-columns-format-for-agenda' which is a proper user option.
This option can be set in your init.el or through customize, and it will
provide a default format for the agenda.  `org-overriding-columns-format
should ONLY EVER be used in the local setting section of a custom agenda
view.

This new variable is not available in master.

- Carsten