What actually survives a Notion export

"I can always export" is one of the most comforting sentences in software, and it is doing a lot of unpaid work. Notion's export is real, and for pages of writing it is good. For databases it is a photograph of one view. For everything else it depends on the format you pick, and most people pick the wrong one for where they are going.

I wrote an importer for these zips, so I have read more Notion exports than is healthy. Here is what is in the box, what is not, and a ten-minute test you can run on your own workspace, whether or not you ever leave.

🧭 Getting the zip

For one page, open the ••• menu, choose Export, and pick a format. For everything, open Settings, then General under Workspace, and choose Export all workspace content. That one only works on desktop and the web. Notion's help page has the current menus, and menus move faster than blog posts.

There are three formats: PDF, HTML, and Markdown & CSV. Two options matter. Include subpages brings the pages under a page along with it, and Create folders for subpages keeps the tree as folders. PDF with subpages is only on the Business and Enterprise plans.

A big export can arrive by email as a download link, and a workspace export link expires after seven days.

📦 What is in the box

A Markdown export is a folder tree that mirrors your pages. Each page is a .md file, and if it has pages under it, a folder beside it holds them:

Every page file ends with a 32-character hex id, which is Notion's own name for the page. Each file starts with the page's title as a