The only way I can think of doing it is, for each completed task out of the exported file, pull up the agenda view (that corresponds to that file), find that item, and mark it as DONE.

Perhaps have this action on the opening of any file in the org-agenda-files list.

I was just hoping it might have already been done so I don't have to start from scratch, seems like a logical thing --- presumably people just manually open up the agenda view for what they've just done away from the laptop, and mark things done, again...

(Incidentally, I actually wrote this functionality years ago (and it'd also switch the next TODO task to NEXT), in a GTD library I made for myself, but recently decided to switch to org mode, as it has a ton of advantages to my simple system. I'm now seeing if I can build a GTD layer on top of org mode, to provide a kind of automatic setup for those new to org-mode, who want to use it with the GTD methodology.)

On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com> wrote:

Chris Poole <lists@chrispoole.com> writes:

Hi,

> I export my agenda custom views to plain text, so I can check things
> off as I go (without access to Emacs).
>
> I use `(org-agenda-prefix-format " [ ] ")` so I can easily add an "X"
> with my text editor on my phone.
>
> Is there any way to have this update the todo items that the exported
> agenda file was created from? (Say, changing NEXT state to DONE.)

I don't think this is possible. Without having looked at org-agenda.el I
guess that the connection between agenda entries and items in .org files
is realised with Emacs Lisp markers (enabling cmds like
`org-agenda-show' in agenda mode). These markers are lost when you simply
copy the agenda contents to a plain text file, so there is no connection
anymore with the Org files.

Maybe the elisp markers could be replaced by unique IDs for each entry
or links that allow the look-up of the associated entries, and you are
lucky and somebody aready figured out how to do this?

--
cheers,
Thorsten