Default folder for dates created using Natural Language Dates plugin

Things I have tried

Browsed through plugin options

What I’m trying to do

Hello all, I love the Natural Language Dates plugin and I use it all the time to schedule tasks and reminders for my future self.

The one issue I have run into is that the plugin generates the date files in the default folder, and not in the Journal folder I created for daily notes. There doesn’t seem to have an option to change the folder location.

Does anyone have a workaround?

Thank you!

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I’ve not used that plugin, so my answer might be a shot in the dark, but what is your setting for Settings > Files & links > Default location for new notes ?

If not set to this already, does it help to set it to Same folder as current file?

In my experience, this helps me in other situations a lot to get the newly created file into the same folder, since I’m usually already are using that note within the “correct” context(/folder).

Thanks.

I can confirm that when I changed the setting to Same folder as current file as you suggested, it would in fact create the new date file in the Journal folder if I am already in a daily note. However, any new notes I’d create would also be placed in the Journal folder, which I don’t want.

I really want to keep the daily notes in one folder and all other notes in the default folder.

Thanks for your suggestion though!

Are you using Templater or similar to add a template to your daily notes? If that is the case, you’ve also go the option to let Templater redirect your note into the correct folder. Not sure how that integrates with Natural Language Dates plugin, but Templater is for sure capable of moving your file into different folders.

It’s also a possibility to have a hotkey triggering a Templater plugin which looks at the title of the current note, and then moves it to the correct folder. It would require an extra operation, but then again, the current operation you need today to ensure it ends up in the right folder is more than an extra key press.

Natural Language Dates doesn’t create files. I guess you are making links with it and then following the links? If so, and if you only use it to make links, you could add the folder path to the date format in the plugin’s settings. Or, if you’re only creating links to your daily notes (and not variants like the date followed by an additional name), just make sure the daily note exists (by, say, clicking the Daily Note button) before following the links.

Hi there, I just wanted to offer the solution I found to this very issue as I kept coming across your post trying to solve this.

This can be worked around using the Date Format field in the plugin settings as it has moment.js under the hood.

For example, if you have this folder structure for your daily notes: Journal/Daily Log/2023/2023-02-01-Wed.md use in the settings for the plugin Date Format: [Journal/Daily Log]/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD-ddd|YYYY-MM-DD-ddd, which will link properly into your Daily Log directory while displaying the link as the pattern presented after the | character.

I hope that helps you (I’ve spent several hours working this out)!

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