Switching from Notion

From Notion workspace to Alexandria workspace

Notion feels like a mix of pages, databases, views, and properties. Alexandria is simpler on disk: Markdown notes with YAML frontmatter, plus tags that can carry typed properties.

There is a dedicated Notion importer, akb-importer. Use Imports for the export and command steps; this page explains what the migration means.

What maps to what

Notion pages become Alexandria notes. The Markdown body from the export becomes the note body. Alexandria adds its own frontmatter, UUID, timestamps, tags, and property values.

Notion databases become collections of notes. Database rows are imported as notes. In Alexandria, the database-like part is usually represented by tags: a tag gathers matching notes and can define the fields those notes should have.

Notion properties become tag properties when they fit. Alexandria supports boolean, select, multi-select, date, number, money, and string. The current importer handles the Notion fields it knows about, including project-style Status, StartDate, EndDate, and URL, by applying a Project tag with properties. Notion tags and source database names are also created as Alexandria tags.

Page hierarchy is a starting point, not the whole system. The importer uses Notion's exported directory structure to recreate parent/child relationships where it can. After import, treat that hierarchy as a rough outline and use tags for cross-cutting organization.

What to expect after import

Your Alexandria workspace will contain plain files under notes/ and imported media under media/. You should be able to open the Markdown files directly, but the YAML frontmatter is part of Alexandria's format and should stay intact.

Local image assets from Notion page export folders are imported when they are recognized image files, and their Markdown references are rewritten for Alexandria. External image URLs stay as external URLs.

The first pass is meant to get your content into Alexandria safely. The valuable cleanup usually comes next: rename tags, add or adjust tag properties, and decide which old Notion database patterns still matter.

Known limitations

Some Notion concepts do not have an Alexandria equivalent today:

Relations, formulas, and rollups are not imported.
Database views, filters, sorts, grouping, permissions, comments, and page history are not preserved.
Properties outside the importer's known fields may need manual review and recreation as tag properties.
Non-image attachments are not imported by the Notion importer today.
Pages are matched by title during import, so duplicate Notion page titles can collide. Test a small export first if your workspace has repeated titles.

Alexandria also does not currently have Notion-style relation properties or saved database views. Use readable Markdown links, tags, and supported property types for the first migration.

Where the mechanics live

For the actual step-by-step process, including the Notion export format and akb-importer notion command, see Imports.