Managing archived notes with cron

I organize with just four folders Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive (the PARA Method). The trouble I have is when I classify a note as archive I want it to go away (gone from search, gone from the graph), but I don’t want to deleted it.

I could add -path:archive to all my searches, but that seemed like too much trouble.

My solution was to split off a new vault called notes_archive. Sadly there is not a shortcut to quickly move a note between vaults. Rather than get out of obsidian and move the files via a filemanager, I’ve opted for a minor automation using cron which is an old reliable task scheduler for linux/macos.

Every night all the notes in the archive folder of my main vault are moved into the notes_archive vault. So when I want to archive a note I just move it into the archive folder with an obsidian shortcut, I have the rest of the day to change my mind, and then the next day it transitions and is no longer visible in my main vault.

# m h  dom mon dow   command
  0 23 *   *   *     cd ~/cloud && mv notes/archive/* notes_archive/.

warning: There is the chance of name collisions here. Overwriting a similarly named note in the notes_archive. I’m not so worried about it (I have other layers to my backups), but adding a date to the filename when moving it into the notes_archive would solve it.

I hate to say this after you’ve already done all that, but there’s an “Excluded files” setting in Settings > Files & Links.

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Oh that is much better. Thank you!