Org-mode archive with inherited tags

The issue

By default only the tags directly attached to an org record will be saved in the archive file. I want to keep all the tags attached to an org record when I archive it, even the inherited ones.

Explanation

In org-mode tags are inherited by default. In case of org tree like this:

* Header1        :tag1:
** Sub Header1   :subtag1:

you may find that Sub Header1 has :tag1:subtag1: tags attached to it.

This is something reflected in Agenda view. Also if you try to find headers with :tag1:
the Sub Header1 will be one of those even though we didn’t directly attach that tag to it. That’s the tag inheritance.

If you try to archive Sub Header1 you will get this kind of record in the *_archive.org file:

* Sub Header1 :subtag1: <--- this is the tag
  :PROPERTIES:
  :ARCHIVE_TIME: <date>
  :ARCHIVE_FILE: <original org file>
  :ARCHIVE_OLPATH: <org path>
  :ARCHIVE_CATEGORY: <org file category>
  :ARCHIVE_ITAGS: tag1 <--- this is the inherited tags
  :END:

As you can see the tag1 is missing in the heading. It is available in the ARCHIVE_ITAGS though. For me it would be much better if I can see all the tags immediately in the record heading. It will also allow me to filter my archived records by those tags.

Solution

(setq org-archive-subtree-add-inherited-tags t)

It’s as easy as that. Now the archived heading will look like this:

* Sub Header1 :tag1:subtag1:

which is exactly what I wanted.