Launched: Import from Notion into Coda

[noah]

We recognize that you have a lot of options to manage projects, take notes, and collaborate with your team. And before you decide on one of them, you’ll want to try on a tool for size. Usually that means painstakingly copy/pasting data into a new construct if you choose to migrate to a new tool. If you thought you’d have to spend your afternoon copy/pasting every Notion page into a Coda doc—I have good news!

Today I’m excited to announce the launch of our Notion importer.

During testing, we saw people use this importer for a number of use cases including:

• Translating a doc into Coda to be published to the Doc Gallery
• Unifying templates into one system in Coda
• Unlocking the power of Packs and the Coda API to super power docs that used to live only in one ecosystem

If you’d like to move your work from Notion into Coda, simply export your Notion page(s) or workspace as HTML, and import them directly to Coda. We’ll do our best to maintain formatting, information hierarchy, references to people & pages, column formats, and lookups so that you can keep making great solutions in Coda. We’ll even translate your cover photos and page icons when possible!

Want help translating common Notion Patterns to Coda? The incredible Ben Parker has you covered with his handy Notion User’s Guide to Coda: https://coda.io/@ben-parker/the-notion-users-guide-to-coda

Here’s step-by-step instructions for how to export your data from Notion to prepare it to be imported:

Tip : If you use Safari, update your General Settings so that the “Open ‘safe’ files after downloading” option is unchecked before you get started . Otherwise, Safari will automatically unzip your Notion export, which will hinder you from importing to Coda.

1. Select your top-level page (which will include its subpages)
2. Click the 3 dot menu in the upper right corner
3. Select Export

4. From the export menu, select your format as HMTL

5. Indicate whether you’d like to include subpages or not.

Tip: We recommend including subpages, as all tables in Notion rely on data from subpages. Exporting without these will prevent your tables from importing to Coda.

6. This will export your work as a zipped file, and download it to your browser; you’ll also get an email with the download link

Once you have your export, you can import the file into Coda as a new doc, or from an existing doc.

For a new doc:

1. Navigate to your doc list at coda.io/docs
2. Click the + New Doc button
3. Select Notion
4. Click the Select file button
5. Choose your zipped file, and click Open

If you’d like to import content into an existing doc using the Explore Panel, follow these steps:

1. Click the Explore text in the upper right corner of your doc
2. Search for “Notion,” and click the option that appears under “Import”
3. Click the Select file button
4. Choose your zipped file, and click Open

If you’d like to import content into an existing doc using the / command, follow these steps:

1. Type /notion anywhere on your page
2. Select the “Notion” option for import
3. Click the Select file button
4. Choose your zipped file, and click Open

Some things to know before you go:

• We thought announcing our v1 API this summer might inspire our friends at Notion to finally launch their API, but alas, we’re still waiting. Don’t worry ー we’re keeping an eye on if/when an API-supported import method might be available. For now, given restrictions, the HTML export is the best option for overall import fidelity.
• HTML exports do not support formulas, filtering, and alternative database views, so they won’t come through “as is” in your imports to Coda; however, Coda will retain the values and data, allowing you to apply new formulas or filters after importing.
• Share your doc (even if it’s blank!) with the referenced people before importing so that you can retain @-references from your export

Thanks for your continued feedback for how we can make Coda a stronger solution for your teams. We hope this helps unify more of your information, more easily!

[Pch]

Thank you very much !!!

[Juan_Luis_Chulilla]

That’s a quite nice advance

However, I’m sure that a lot of us would appreciate a way of importing excel or json archives using archives and not copy and paste

[Connor_McCormick]

I think there is an excel importer, right? I could see how json would be nice too

[Carlos_Roriz_Amplus_Construtora]

Cool. Hopefully more people will adopt Coda. It’s just going to be really rough without multi-column support for the canvas layout. People use it all the time on Notion.

[Andrew_Stinger]

We’ve heard this a lot and are researching this heavily, but no ETA at the moment. (Yet.)

[rwd]

I am very pleased with most page content and title, but some other metadata is missing. I may have missed it, but what happens to Notion properties on the page. Are these imported and visible in Coda?

[noah]

Glad to hear that things are working well @rwd ! Some information is not exported from Notion, such as Database Page descriptions, and is therefore unable to be imported. You can see a full list of possible import discrepancies on this page of Ben Parker’s Notion User’s Guide to Coda: https://coda.io/@ben-parker/the-notion-users-guide-to-coda/using-the-importer-2.

Are you asking specifically about the properties associated with a row in a database when you open the row as a page in Notion?

[rwd]

I use Notion web clipper to capture info from the web that I annotate later and would love to import it completely into Coda.

I see the property names and values in the HTML file that Notion exports, but I do not see it in the imported Coda file. I don’t think properties are listed in the page you reference. Am I looking in the wrong place?

[noah]

Thanks for sharing that context @rwd! The page you sent is the page representation of a row in a database. The properties data you are referencing is simply displayed on the page, but is actually stored in the parent database. If you export the full database where you store your web clippings (and its subpages) that information will be brought in as columns in a Coda table.

Here is an example to illustrate more clearly what I mean (and the differences between Notion and Coda in this regard). Say I have a reading list in Notion that looks like:

If I export this database (and its subpages) as HTML, and import them into a Notion doc, I get something like:

Opening any of the sub pages linked to in the ‘Name’ column, the properties are not shown in the same way at the top of the page like they are in Notion. However, they are listed as columns in the database itself.

Going one step further, if I wanted to emulate showing the row’s properties in each subpage, I could add a view of the database table filtered to show only the row in question:

In summary, the data you are asking about is stored in the database, not on each page. Therefore, you need to export the entire database. Separately, Coda does not, by default, show this information, though you can populate it as desired.

Hope this all makes sense; thanks for the great question!

[rwd]

Things are working as you described. I had a stumble with Notion initially as the export was of everything in the DB not just those items found by the filter. I am going to move them to a new DB first and then export.

Thanks for your help.

[Pete_Thornbury]

This is great! As soon as Coda.io has a dark theme, or better yet a way to do custom theming (especially for published docs) I will TOTALLY switch my primary paid low-code solution from Notion to Coda.

[Sarah_Arminta]

I just wanted to say bravo for having this feature! I was able to import a table with a whole lot of pages and notes into Coda and it worked almost perfectly. Thank you!!

[Andrew_Stinger]

Dark mode is now available in Beta

Launched: Dark mode [Beta]

I’ll cut right to the chase: Coda’s version of dark mode has arrived! We’ve been working through how to build the often-requested feature natively to Coda for a while now, and I’m excited to share that we’re ready for you to try it out. Simply click your avatar in the upper right hand corner of Coda, and toggle the “Appearance (Beta)” setting to “Dark”. Or keep it on “Light” if you prefer the classic look. We recommend choosing the “Use system setting” option, which will match any schedules you…

[jeo]

@Carlos_Roriz_Amplus_Construtora

Hopefully more people will adopt Coda. It’s just going to be really rough without multi-column support for the canvas layout. People use it all the time on Notion.

@Carlos_Roriz_Amplus_Construtora, @Mario [and anyone else who reads this later]
Please click through to

(2021-04-22)

Coda seeking feedback on potential new feature!

Hey there! We’ve heard your feedback, and Coda’s product team is now exploring the possibility of a new feature: canvas columns . To explain it simply, this feature would allow you to position content side-by-side in the canvas. At this point, we’re still in the exploration phase and can’t make any promises. And should we be able to move forward with this feature, it will likely take time (don’t expect to see it launched in the next few weeks). But with all that said, we’d love to get some more…

[Mario]

hey @jeo thank you so much for this link!
i’ll compile it right now!
that would be finally the UI unlock for coda doc’s

[Dwayne_Melancon]

I tried importing my workspace from Notion and I end up with just a blank new document in Coda - is this only for importing single pages? My import file is 1.3gb in size - is that the issue?

[noah]

@Dwayne_Melancon

is this only for importing single pages?

Hey @Dwayne_Melancon! Sorry you’re having trouble. The importer is designed for single or multi paged imports, but an import of that large size may take some time to complete. If you are still having issues, do you mind writing to support so we can help resolve any issues?

[KeyBerry]

Yeah … I have a large amount coming from Notion also … and it isn’t working. Is there a work around? In Notion … it’s an all or nothing sort of thing … maybe I could move some to the archive … and move it back … then import piecemeal?

[noah]

Hey @KeyBerry, thanks for posting! When exporting from Notion, you can export a subset of pages (as detailed here) by selecting the “Export” option on a page, and toggling to include its subpages. This should allow you to export and import in smaller chunks instead of importing your entire workspace at once. If you are still running into issues, please write in to support and we can help resolve them!