Troubleshooting

My entry didn’t get added where I expected

• Check vault and file_path_format in your config — the computed path is <vault>/<file_path_format with {year}/{month}/{date} substituted>. See Vault and File Path.
• If you used -c <category>, make sure section_header_<category> is actually defined in your config. If it isn’t, the entry silently goes to the default section instead.
• $OBSIDIAN_VAULT_DIR, if set, always wins over the vault value in the config file — check your shell environment if entries are landing in an unexpected vault.

My entries appear in the wrong section, or categories “bleed” into each other

Log entries within a section must be consecutive, with no blank lines between them. The log block for a section runs from its heading up to the next ## heading (or end of file). If you manually add blank lines or other content inside a log section, obsidian-logging may stop treating subsequent lines as part of that section.

My existing timestamps changed from HH:mm to HH:mm:ss

This is expected. Since version 1.3.0, adding a new entry to a section reformats every existing timestamp in that section to include seconds, if it doesn’t already have them. See List Type and Time Format.

-p <phrase> fails with “Phrase not found”

The name after -p must exactly match a key under phrases: in your config file. Check spelling and indentation in your YAML — phrase names are case-sensitive.

Weekday names or {#} conjunctions aren’t in the language I expected

The locale setting is matched slightly differently for weekday names (long codes, e.g. de_DE) and for phrase conjunctions (short codes, e.g. de) — a single value generally only localizes one of the two. See Locale for the full matching tables and a worked example.

-e opens the wrong editor, or nothing happens

-e uses $EDITOR. If it’s unset, vim is used. Set $EDITOR in your shell profile if you’d rather use something else:

export EDITOR=nano

Nothing is printed at all

Check whether you (or a script calling obsidian-logging) passed -s/--silent — it suppresses all output, including error messages, by design.

Still stuck?

Open an issue on GitHub with your config file (with any personal paths redacted) and the exact command you ran.