How To Build And Automate An Obsidian Daily Note Template – Part 3

Introduction

Now that I have unfolded by Daily Note setup, I will go through the setting up of the template in its initial form. This may be very basic for those more experienced with Obsidian, but is included for people who are new to the community as the skills learned in this article and video will be useful in preparing other templates.

Step 1 – Install the Community Plugin – Calendar

This is not absolutely necessary, but makes it a lot easier to use Daily Notes as you only have to click on the calendar day and the Daily Note will appear for that day. If a note doesn’t exist for that day, you will be asked if you wish to create one. The video will guide you through this process.

Step 2 – Make Sure Your Daily Notes Plugin is Setup

In the first instance, go to the Settings area and then to Daily Notes in the Core Plugins area. You need to make sure you have a folder for where your template will stored and also a location for where your Daily Notes will be stored. Make sure that it is recorded in the plugin area.

Tip: I store my Daily Notes by year as otherwise they can become too cumbersome. So in the Daily Notes Plugin area, I specify the folder to store the Daily Notes and then a sub-folder for the year. I simply change this once a year to create a new area.

Step 3 – Blank Note

Create a new note and give it the title of Daily Note Template or whatever else you wish to call it. I do suggest though that you use the word “template” in the title. If you make a practice of this with all your templates you will always be alerted to what the note is about and where it shoud reside in your folder structure if it’s being used as a template.

Step 4 – Headmatter

Inserting the headmatter in the template saves it being entered manually every time you use the template. Because the Daily Note will always be exactly that, you can use a tag of “#dailynote”. You set this up with the word tag followed by one or two colons. One colon is the syntax for YAML, (Yet Another Markdown Language) and can only be used in the headmatter. But, if you use two colons, you can use Dataview to search for anything where they exist. Personally, I use two colons consistently through my vault.

The {{date}} entry will automatically insert the date in the format you set up in the Template plugin settings. I suggest you stick to the international format of YYYY-MM-DD in this area of your templates as it will again provide consistency throughout your templates and vault.

Step 5 – The Daily Note Heading

The heading is set up as a Header 1 tag and is formatted for how you like your dates formatted. In my case, it is in the Australian format of Day Abbreviation, day, month, year. You can always do a search online for the format you may choose to use.

Step 6 – Insert Your Headings

Now it’s a matter of going through and inserting the headings you want for your Daily Note. Feel free to insert placeholder headings that you may not use right now, but might like to use in the future.

Step 7 – Test Your Daily Note

Either pin the Daily Note template to your screen or open a new tab. In the new tab, click on a day in the calendar where you know a Daily Note does not exist. It should ask you if you wish to create a new note. If it does, click on yes and you should see a new note with all your work from the template ready to go. The headings at the top should be filled in. If this works, then give yourself a pat on the back and if you have put a heading in your Daily Note for your Wins, don’t forget to record it!

If you don’t see “Create a New Note”, go back and check the parameters in the Daily Notes plugin are correct. There could be a typo or you may have missed something.

Video Demonstration