Notion export formats compared: PDF, HTML, Markdown and CSV

1. Which Notion export format should you choose?

Start from where the data is going, not from which format sounds most portable. The formats differ in what they can hold, and the destination has usually already made the choice for you.

If you are archiving, HTML is the answer, because it is the only format that keeps the discussion attached to the work. If you are feeding another tool, check what that tool demands before you export: as section 8 shows, the destinations that read Notion mostly want HTML too, including the ones you would expect to want Markdown.

2. How do you export a Notion page or database?

Every export starts from the same menu, whatever the format:

1. Open the page or database and click the ••• icon in the top right.
2. Choose Export.
3. Pick your format from the Export format dropdown.
4. Set the options, then click Export.

Three options in that dialog decide how much you actually get. Include content exports everything or excludes files and images, which shrinks the download and makes it far weaker as an archive. Include subpages pulls in the tree below the page, and leaving it off is the most common way people end up with an export that looks fine and is missing most of the workspace.

Create folders for subpages is the one to think about, because the right answer depends entirely on where the file is going and the two answers conflict: the Obsidian importer needs it switched on, and the standard fix for a zip that Windows refuses to open is to switch it off. Section 7 covers that collision.

Databases export one view at a time

This is the constraint that surprises people, and Notion is explicit about it: when exporting a database, "you can only choose between the current view and the default view", and "exporting all views at once isn't supported".

So a database with a board, a calendar and three filtered tables produces one file per export run, reflecting one of those arrangements. Whatever a view filters out is not in the file, and nothing in the file announces the rows that were left behind. If you want everything, export from an unfiltered view.

One view type cannot be exported at all. Notion states that "at this time, you can't export a Form view of a database", and suggests exporting the questions and responses from a Table view instead.

3. How do you export your entire Notion workspace?

Workspace export lives in settings rather than on any page:

1. Open Settings in the sidebar.
2. Under Workspace, select General.
3. Select Export all workspace content.

You will not get a download. Notion emails you a link, and two numbers govern the wait: "exports can take up to 30 hours to process, depending on the size of the workspace", and "this link will expire after 7 days". That combination is worth planning around, because an export requested on a Friday can finish on a Saturday and expire while you are still deciding where to put it.

If your email notifications are switched off, the link goes to your in-app inbox instead of your inbox, which is a quiet way to miss it entirely. Workspace export is also desktop and web only.

Workspace PDF export is being retired. Notion's documentation states that the option to export workspace content as a PDF "is going away", rolling out gradually to workspaces "between now and August 31, 2026". HTML, Markdown and CSV are unaffected, and individual pages can still be exported as PDF. If a Business or Enterprise plan currently relies on whole-workspace PDF for a compliance archive, that process needs replacing rather than rescheduling.

What a workspace export does not include

The export reflects what the person running it can see. Notion notes that "pages that the exporter doesn't have access to, such as private pages of other users, will not be included in the export", and that some content may be excluded based on teamspace settings. An admin exporting on behalf of the company therefore gets the company's shared work, not everything in the workspace. Enterprise admins can grant themselves access to specific pages through content search so those pages are covered next time; on any other plan the private tier is out of reach.

The zip does include a sitemap, index.html, whose entries link locally to the exported pages in the HTML and Markdown formats. It is the only thing that makes a large export navigable, so do not discard it when you reorganise the folder.

4. How do you export a Notion page as PDF?

Page-level PDF is the format most people reach for, and it is the one that survives the change described above. From the ••• menu choose Export, select PDF, then set Include content, Page format (paper size) and, if the layout is cramped, the Scale percentage.

Two limits are worth knowing before you rely on it.

Subpages are a paid feature. The Include subpages toggle for PDF requires a Business or Enterprise plan. On those plans it produces a zip containing one PDF per nested page, plus folders of images and assets, delivered by email. On any other plan, PDF means the single page in front of you, so a documentation tree has to be exported page by page or exported as HTML instead.

Custom emojis disappear. Notion says plainly that "custom emojis will not be appear in PDF exports". On a workspace that uses custom emojis as status markers or team icons, the PDF loses a layer of meaning without any visible gap where it used to be.

There is also a quiet fallback worth recognising: if a PDF export fails, Notion exports the page as HTML instead. If you asked for a PDF and received a zip of HTML files, nothing went wrong with your click.

Printing is the shortcut when you only need one page. In a browser, File → Print and then Save as PDF skips the export dialog entirely. It will not work for a full-page database, and it is not available in the Notion desktop app at all, where the only route is to export a PDF and print that.

5. What does a Notion export leave out?

Some of what goes missing depends on the format you picked, and some of it goes missing regardless.

Comments, unless you chose HTML

This is the single largest difference between the formats. Notion's documentation is specific: "when you export as HTML, you can also export comments at both the page and block levels. This includes resolved and unresolved comments and any files, pages, or users mentioned in them."

No equivalent exists for PDF or Markdown. On a workspace used for collaboration rather than storage, the comments are frequently the most valuable thing in it, and choosing PDF for readability throws all of them away. It is also, as section 9 explains, the one thing an export can do that a live API connection cannot.

The connections between databases

A relation property points at pages in another database. In a CSV that becomes text, in the same way an Airtable linked record does, so the names of the connected things survive and the connections do not. If your Notion setup leans on relations and rollups, a CSV export is a record of its contents rather than a copy of its structure. The same logic that governs an Airtable base export applies here.

Views, history, and anything you cannot see

An export is a snapshot of one view of the current state. The board grouping, the calendar arrangement and the filters that make a database usable all belong to views, and views do not survive the file. Page history stays in Notion, private pages belonging to other people are not included, and on a PDF export custom emojis are dropped. None of these produce an error or a gap in the file.

6. Is a Notion export a backup?

It is a copy you hold, which is genuinely worth having. It is not a restore point, and Notion says so directly: "you can't instantly recreate your workspace by reuploading your exported workspace content".

That sentence is the whole distinction. A backup, in the sense most people mean, is something you can put back. A Notion export is an archive you can read, search and mine, but rebuilding a workspace from it is a migration project rather than an upload.

Notion does keep per-minute backups of page content on its own servers, and page history restores past versions from inside the app, going back a number of days that depends on your plan. Both live inside your Notion account, so they protect you from a bad afternoon rather than from losing the account.

There is one more reason not to treat the export as your safety net. On the Enterprise plan, export can be switched off: a workspace owner can disable it under Settings → Security, and a teamspace owner can disable it for a single teamspace. Your ability to hold a copy of your own team's work is a setting someone else controls, so if it matters, take the export while you can rather than when you need it.

7. Why is Export missing, or why will the zip not open?

Two failures account for most of the trouble, and neither is a bug.

The Export option is not in the menu

On an Enterprise workspace, export can be turned off centrally, as described above, so the option simply does not render for members. If you are a guest rather than a member, the requirement is different: Notion only shows export to guests with Full access to the page or database, which is not the same as "can edit". Neither is something you can work around from the page itself.

Windows will not open the exported zip

This one is obscure enough that almost nobody writes it down, and common enough to stop a migration dead. Notion creates nested folders for subpages, and Windows cannot handle file paths longer than 260 characters by default. A deep page tree with long page titles exceeds that easily, and the zip then fails to open or extract.

Notion documents two fixes. Either uncheck Create folders for subpages when exporting, which keeps everything in one folder and shortens every path, or extract with a tool such as 7-Zip, which handles long paths that Windows Explorer will not.

Pick the second one if the export is destined for another tool. Flattening the folders shortens the paths, but it also destroys the hierarchy that importers use to reconstruct your page tree, and at least one of them requires those folders to exist.

8. How do you move Notion to Markdown, Google Docs, Confluence or ClickUp?

Notion is unusual in that the tools people move to have mostly built real importers, so this is less about massaging a file and more about producing the right one. The pattern worth internalising: the destination picks your format, and it usually picks HTML, including the destinations that exist to work in Markdown.

Notion to Markdown and Google Docs

These are the two most-searched destinations, and they pull in opposite directions.

Google Docs reads Markdown directly. Upload the .md file to Drive and open it with Docs, or use File → Open → Upload from inside Docs, and headings, bold, italics, strikethrough and links come across. It works a page at a time, which is fine for a handful of documents and unworkable for a workspace. Your databases will not follow: they exported as CSV, and a CSV is a spreadsheet rather than a document.

Obsidian is the interesting case, because it is a Markdown application that does not want your Markdown. Obsidian's importer offers two routes, and both have conditions. The API route connects to Notion directly and preserves databases as Bases, but imports only the primary view of each database and does not support linked data sources. The file route needs a zip exported as HTML, not Markdown, with Create folders for subpages switched on, and it does not preserve databases at all.

So the format that looks most portable is not the one the portable-format tool asks for, and the option you need switched on is the one Windows users are told to switch off. Decide where the export is going before you tick anything.

Notion to Confluence

Atlassian ships a full Notion importer, reached from Spaces → Import from other tools → Notion, and it handles either an entire workspace or a page with its subpages. Each Notion teamspace becomes a Confluence space, and private pages land in a new restricted space. You need to be a Notion workspace owner to run it.

The part worth knowing in advance is how it gets your comments. The importer takes your exported zip, but the zip is not enough on its own, so Atlassian's documented procedure asks you to log in through OAuth and supply an access token that you obtain by opening your browser's developer tools on notion.so, finding the token_v2 cookie and pasting its value into the import wizard. Without that step, Atlassian's own guide is clear that you lose @mentions, page comments, creator and editor information, permissions and user group data.

Some things do not survive the mapping regardless. Atlassian lists inline comments as arriving as page comments, block and inline equations and Mermaid diagrams as plain text, database child page properties as tables, and breadcrumbs, buttons, table customisation and synced blocks as unsupported outright.

Notion to ClickUp or Airtable

ClickUp's importer is genuinely built for this and is available on every plan, but it reads only the HTML export, with Include content set to everything. Notion databases all land in a single Folder as Lists, and Notion docs land in a single ClickUp Doc as subpages.

The losses are specific and worth checking against your own workspace. ClickUp documents that inline database task comments, task descriptions and attachments do not import, that page history does not import, and that toggles, callouts, columns, code blocks, cover images and page icons arrive as plain text or bullet points. Fields become Text custom fields, so a select property that drove your board becomes a string. Page comments do come across, but only if you included them when exporting from Notion, which means choosing HTML in the first place.

Airtable has no Notion importer at all. The route is Airtable's CSV import extension, one Notion database at a time, capped at 25,000 rows and 5 MB per import. Since a Notion database exports as a flat CSV, this is the route that loses the most: no relations, no page bodies beyond what fits in a cell, and no comments.

Destination importers were checked against each vendor's documentation on August 13, 2026.

9. How do you move a Notion database into Breeze?

Every route above starts by producing a file, which means the destination inherits whatever that file already lost. Breeze reads your Notion workspace through the API instead: it connects with read access, shows what it is about to do, and changes nothing in Notion.

That trade runs in both directions and is worth being straight about. Reading the API means no 30-hour wait, no expiring link, no zip that Windows will not open and no format decision. It also means Breeze sees what the API exposes, which is not quite everything an HTML export contains.

Choosing which property becomes your columns

A Notion database does not declare which property holds its statuses, because in a database that is just another property. Breeze resolves this in the order you would want: if the database already has a board view, it reads that view's grouping and builds the same columns. Only when there is no board view to read does it ask you to pick.

Running the import

In Breeze, open the menu in the top-right corner, select Settings, open the Import tab and select Import next to Notion. The wizard runs in up to five steps: connect, choose the databases, pick the property that becomes your columns where one is needed, match people, and review before anything is written.

Only a Breeze account owner or admin can import a whole workspace as new projects. Importing a single database into a project you already have works from that project's settings instead.

What comes across from Notion

Three honest limits. Relation properties are skipped, for the same reason a CSV cannot carry them: through the API a relation is a list of page IDs pointing at rows that this import may not even be bringing across, so it could only ever arrive as an opaque identifier. Attachments are skipped rather than linked, because Notion's file URLs are temporary signed links that expire after one hour, so a stored link would be dead before anyone clicked it. Breeze reports how many it skipped. And resolved comment threads do not come across, because Notion's API returns only open ones. That last one is the exception to everything above: if the resolved discussion matters, an HTML export is the only way to keep it, and it is worth taking one before you migrate.

Notion has no time tracking of any kind, so there is none to bring. Large imports keep running in the background, and Breeze emails you when they finish and tells you what it could not bring. Importing the same database again offers to update the project it created last time rather than making a second copy, and it never deletes what you have added in Breeze.

Still deciding rather than moving? Compare the practical differences in Breeze vs Notion, or look at other Notion alternatives. Exporting is worth doing even if you stay, because it tells you which parts of your workspace are portable and which only exist inside Notion.

Common questions about exporting Notion data

Can you export a Notion database to Excel?

Yes, indirectly. Export the database as Markdown & CSV and open the resulting CSV in Excel. Two things to watch: you get one view per export, so filters applied to that view silently reduce the file, and relation properties arrive as the text of the linked pages rather than as links.

Does a Notion export include page history?

No. An export captures the current state of your pages. Version history lives inside Notion, where you can restore past versions going back a number of days that depends on your plan.

Can you import Notion into Breeze without exporting first?

Yes. Breeze connects to Notion with read access and reads the databases directly, so there is no export file, no 30-hour wait and no format to choose. The one thing the file route keeps that the API cannot is resolved comment threads.

Pick the format for where the data is going

Export as HTML if you are keeping a copy, because it is the only format that keeps your comments with your content. Export as Markdown & CSV if a person or a script is going to read the result. Export as PDF only for things that need to look like documents, and not for anything you expect to reconstruct later.

And if you are moving the work rather than filing it, the file is a detour. See exactly what Breeze imports from Notion, then try it with one database before you move the rest.