emacs - Emacs Org-Mode: Enabling Markdown Exporter

Question

I'm trying to enable the Markdown exporter for Org-Mode. According to the the manual I should "customize org-export-backends".

However when I try

M-x customize-variable RET org-export-backends

...Emacs complains that there is [no match] for this variable. I can inspect the variable (using describe-variable, so I know it exists) but there is no 'customize' link to click.

Why won't this work? Is my setup broken, and if so, how can I fix it?

(I am running Debian testing (jessie) with org-mode 7.9 if that makes any difference.)

Answer 1

The usage of word "customizing" in the manual is a bit misleading (if version of manual matches version of org-mode you are using).

Variable org-export-backends is not customizable via customize (its definition was done with defvar, as opposed to defcustom). You need to use something like setq to set the value you like.