Obsidian recurring tasks

[GuentherGredy]

Hello to all,
I've been working with Obsidian for some time now, and I particularly like the Tasks plugin; it's a wonderful tool for organizing your daily life; all due respect to the developers of this great tool.

My question concerns the "recurring" tasks. Your Tasks user guide provides examples, such as this one:
"every 6 months on the 2nd Wednesday."

I modified it for my purposes to:

- [ ] #recurring Maintain Coffee Machine 🔁 every 3 months 🛫 2025-10-06 🏁 delete

That doesn't work.

However, this works:

- [ ] #recurring Maintain Coffee Machine 🔁 every month 🛫 2025-10-06 🏁 delete

or

- [ ] #recurring Maintain Coffee Machine 🔁 every 2 weeks 🛫 2025-10-06 🏁 delete

In the latter example, however, it only works for up to 8 weeks; not for any longer than that.

What am I doing wrong?

I would be very grateful for any advice.

Best regards, Guenther

[claremacrae]

Hi, I'd like to help, but I am very short of time at the moment.

To help me answer quickly, could you please give:

1. one specific example that does not work?
2. and show me what happens when you complete the task?

Thanks.

[GuentherGredy]

Hello,

thank you very much for your answer! However, I must apologize in advance; the error was on my side; I obviously still have a few steps to go on the Obsidian Tasks learning curve.

The reason I thought the recurrence rule for the task in question wasn't working was due to an older query that I hadn't updated, and therefore wasn't displaying the task.

I've found the problem; everything's working now.

Maybe there's another question I couldn't find the answer to in the Tasks User Guide. Are there wildcards in the query to, for example, retrieve tasks with the two recurrence rules "every 2 months" and "every 3 months" in one query like "recurrence includes every * months"?

Thanks again and sorry!

Best regards,

Guenther

[claremacrae]

Hu Guenther, no worries - it's why it's helpful to have examples, to confirm the problem - I'm glad you worked it out.

When I don't remember a particular search query, I have a look at the Quick Reference page.

It looks like the following Recurrence query should work:

recurrence regex matches /every [23] months/

I tested it, and it matched things like this:

If you wanted to have an exact match, it would be this:

recurrence regex matches /every [23] months$/

[GuentherGredy]

Hello,

I would like to thank you very much for your support and your time.

So far, I haven't gotten around to using regular expressions when formulating queries in Obsidian. During my professional experience in software engineering—I'm now retired—I've used them frequently, and so I've now managed to create a suitable query relatively quickly.
Thanks again for helping me get started.

Please allow me to say a few words about my experiences with Obsidian so far.

Obsidian is a top-notch tool with high quality. The user guides are detailed and written in a free-form style, always with the aim of being helpful, not a prescription, thus leaving room for creativity. I also appreciate the friendly and respectful attitude expressed in the help provided by the support team.

I would like to support with a certain fee. How is that possible without licensing anything?

Perhaps you can forward this to the Obsidian team.

Obsidian is a gem, does the name say it all?

Thank you very much!

Best regards,

Guenther

[claremacrae]

I would like to support with a certain fee. How is that possible without licensing anything?

They have a mechanism for that.

Details are here:
https://help.obsidian.md/catalyst

Although it's badged as providing early access to test versions, a secondary thing is that it is a way to make a small payment to support the development of Obsidian.

Perhaps you can forward this to the Obsidian team.

No sorry - my role is in supporting the Tasks plugin, nothing more.

[claremacrae]

@GuentherGredy, just a thought on this...

Perhaps you can forward this to the Obsidian team.

Sometimes people who opt for one of the 'Access to exclusive [Discord] lounge channel, #vip-lounge' options put a thank-you message in there, when joining...

So that is one way to contact the team, if you wish.

Or you could always thank them on one of their social media channels.

[GuentherGredy]

Thank you, Clare, for all your support. BR Guenther