Hello, I think this is a recent change in behavior. I can no longer eval Babel blocks that expect table inputs via :var when they are in a section with a COMMENT status.
Here is an MWE org file: === BEGIN === * COMMENT Tables not found when section is commented #+NAME: table | foo | (org-babel-ref-resolve "table") === END === When I try to eval (org-babel-ref-resolve "table"), Org reports: org-babel-ref-resolve: Reference ‘table’ not found in this buffer If I remove the "COMMENT" state on the heading, then the table is found. I do not recall this happening in earlier versions of Org, but does now with the latest version from melpa. Tested with /usr/bin/emacs -Q -l ~/.emacs.d/DEBUG.el ~/.emacs.d/DEBUG.org with DEBUG.org above and DEBUG.el containing: (setq package-user-dir (expand-file-name "elpa" "~/.emacs.d/DEBUG")) (require 'package) (setq package-enable-at-startup nil) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "http://melpa.org/packages/") t) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("org" . "http://orgmode.org/elpa/") t) (package-initialize) (unless (package-installed-p 'use-package) (package-refresh-contents) (package-install 'use-package)) (setq package-enable-at-startup nil) (defvar use-package-verbose t) (require 'use-package) (setq use-package-always-ensure t) (use-package org :ensure org-plus-contrib :config (setq org-confirm-babel-evaluate nil) (org-babel-do-load-languages 'org-babel-load-languages '((shell . t)))) -k.