I wanted to share a function that I've found incredibly useful while conducting qualitative data analysis of interviews. During this type of research, structuring my interview data and maintaining a clear overview is crucial. To assist with this, I've developed a function in Emacs Lisp that uses tags to extract specific headlines into a new buffer.
This function, /extract-headlines-by-tag/, prompts the user to enter a tag. The function then scans the entire buffer, and for each headline that contains the specified tag, it extracts not only the headline but also its content. These extracted parts are then transferred into a new buffer. I've made the new buffer pop up for immediate review after the extraction process.
Here's the piece of code:
#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(defun extract-headlines-by-tag (tag)
"Extract headlines and their content from current buffer by TAG."
(interactive "sEnter tag: ")
(save-excursion
(let ((result-buffer (generate-new-buffer (concat "/Extracted Headlines " tag ""))))
(with-current-buffer result-buffer
(org-mode)
(insert " Extracted Headlines by Tag: " tag " *\n\n"))
(org-element-map (org-element-parse-buffer) 'headline
(lambda (headline)
(when (member tag (org-element-property :tags headline))
(with-current-buffer result-buffer
(insert (org-element-interpret-data headline) "\n")))))
(pop-to-buffer result-buffer))))
#+end_src
