The workaround with lambda worked, thanks a lot! As I mentioned I didn't
have any problems with the templates in years but they stopped working
after a recent update.

Alex

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 3:05 PM, Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com> wrote:

> Alexander Vorobiev <alexander.vorobiev@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > I have recently started having this issue with my capture templates. In
> my case I want to ask the user
> > (me) which file should be used to store the note, so I have a bunch of
> templates like this
> >
> > (setq org-capture-templates
> >              '(("o" "Project todo" entry (file+headline
> (av/choose-agenda-file) "Tasks") ))
> >
> > where av/choose-agenda-file uses completing-read to ask the user to
> choose a file from a list it
> > constructs on the fly. This approach has worked for years and now it
> results in the "invalid file
> > location" message. The backquote does not help because the function
> needs to be called at run time, not
> > when the variable is defined.
> >
>
> IIUC, you cannot use arbitrary sexps, but you *can* use
>
> ("o" "Project todo" entry (file+headline (lambda ()
> (av/choose-agenda-file)) "Tasks"))
>
> Other plausible forms (e.g. (function av/choose-agenda-file) or (quote
> av/choose-agenda-file) )
> run afoul of the abritrary sexp exception and do not work AFAICS.
>
> --
> Nick
>
>
>