Importing from Notion
The Notion import connects to your Notion workspace over OAuth and copies the pages and databases you select, with their hierarchy and property mappings. It can be run more than once to update what it brought across.
Connecting
Go to Import and choose Connect Notion. You will be sent to Notion to authorise the connection and to choose which pages and databases Ascend is allowed to see.
Ascend can only import content you grant it access to during that step. If something is missing from the list later, the usual cause is that it was not shared with the integration — reconnect and grant it.
Once connected, the button changes to Import from Notion.
Step 1 — Select content
The wizard lists your Notion pages and databases as a tree. Tick what you want. Select All and Deselect All handle the bulk case, and Refresh re-reads the list if you have just changed what Notion shares.
The count of selected items is shown before you continue.
Step 2 — Configure
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Target Workspace | The Ascend workspace the imported content lands in. Child pages inherit their parent's workspace |
| Import Mode | Create new makes fresh pages and databases. Update existing writes into ones you imported before |
| Preserve page hierarchy | Keeps parent and child pages nested as they were in Notion |
| Include files and images | Brings across attachments and images as well as text |
| Skip archived database rows | Leaves Notion's archived rows behind |
| Conflict Resolution | What to do when an item was already imported: Skip, Overwrite or Merge |
In Update existing mode you also map each Notion database to the Ascend database it should write into.
Before starting, a summary shows how many items are selected, which workspace they will land in, and which mode is about to run.
Do a small Create-new run first
Import five pages, look at what arrived, then import the rest. A full workspace imported under the wrong workspace or hierarchy setting is far more work to unpick than a second run is to start.
Step 3 — Column mapping
If you selected any Notion databases, the wizard offers a column mapping step: which Notion property becomes which Ascend property, and what type it takes.
Mappings can be saved as a template and reused, which matters when you are importing several databases that share a schema.
Step 4 — Import and review
The import runs with a progress display and can be cancelled while it is going. When it finishes you get a list of what was created and, if anything failed, the option to retry just the failures.
Running it again
Notion import supports incremental runs. Re-run the wizard with Update existing and the appropriate conflict resolution to pick up changes made in Notion since the last import.
Choose the conflict behaviour deliberately:
- Skip — leave everything already imported alone. Safest, adds only new items.
- Overwrite — Notion wins. Any edit you made in Ascend to an imported record is replaced.
- Merge — combines the two.
Overwrite discards Ascend-side edits
If you have been working on imported records inside Ascend, Overwrite replaces that work with whatever Notion currently holds. Use Skip unless you specifically want Notion to be the source of truth.
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