Thanks again Richard. I now have a working solution which I share below, warts and all.
One snag I hit that I feel I should mention is what I believe to be a mistake in the documentation[1]. I was scratching my head as why org-clocktable-defaults wasn't working, but it was only when I brought up the inline documentation that I see that this probably is some vestigial variableand it has since moved to org-clock-clocktable-default-properties. Is mentioning this here on the list enough or should I report it somewhere else? Christopher #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (defun org-date-to-list () "Run `org-read-date' and return it in the form '(mm dd YYYY). This form is more useful for functions that require it in this format, such as `org-datetree-find-date-create'." (let* ((date-string (org-read-date)) (year (substring date-string 0 4)) (month (substring date-string 5 7)) (day (substring date-string 8 10))) (mapcar 'string-to-number (list month day year)))) (defun org-update-clocktable-on-date (date) (let* ((year (number-to-string (nth 2 date))) (month (number-to-string (nth 0 date))) (day (number-to-string (nth 1 date))) (org-clock-clocktable-default-properties (list :scope 'agenda :maxlevel 6 :block (concat year "-" month "-" day)))) (save-excursion ;; open the file containing the datetree: (find-file (concat org-directory "/diary.org")) ;; jump to the subtree for the given date: ;; note: date must look like (m d y) where all three values are integers (org-datetree-find-date-create date) ;; narrow to the subtree for this date, so we don't update ;; any other clocktables (org-narrow-to-subtree) ;; update the clock report, or create it if it doesn't exist ;; note: we pass a prefix argument to tell org-clock-report to ;; update the first clocktable it finds in the (narrowed) buffer (org-clock-report t) ;; widen to the whole buffer again (widen)))) ;; Usage ; (org-update-clocktable-on-date (org-date-to-list)) #+END_SRC [1] Variable org-clocktable-defaults is mentioned here https://orgmode.org/manual/The-clock-table.html