Navigate with the sidebar

The Notion sidebar allows you to:

• Organize your work on infinite levels — nesting pages inside pages with no limit.

• Open all the toggles to see where everything is. Collapse them to keep your navigation simple and streamlined.

• Rearrange pages using drag-and-drop.

At the top of your sidebar, you'll see several features and menu options. Here's an overview of each of these.

• Workspace switcher: Click on your current workspace's name to switch between the workspaces you belong to, create a new one, add another account, or log out.

• Search: Click to open Notion's search window, where you can either type what you're looking for or jump to a recently visited page. The shortcut cmd/ctrl + P also brings it up. 

• Updates: Click to see all your notifications in one place. This menu combines revisions that were made on pages you have created, new mentions of you across your workspace, and new work assignments. A red notification badge will appear here when you have unread notifications. 

• All teamspaces: If you're using the Plus, Business or Enterprise Plan, this menu lists all of the teamspaces in your workspace. Click this to browse and join teamspaces! Learn more about teamspaces →

• Settings & members: Click to open a control panel for editing your account information, workspace settings, payment plan or billing information.

Your workspace's pages are organized into several sections in the sidebar. Here are their names and what they mean!

• Every user's workspace comes with a Private section for their own pages. Anything you add here can't be seen by the people in your workspace.

• This is useful for your own tasks or notes, or anything you want to work on individually before sharing with others.

• You can open up each toggle to reveal pages nested inside any page. All pages have the same functionality, even if they're nested as sub-pages.

• For database pages, you can open the toggle to see all the different views you've created of that database. These are represented with a • next to them, like under Team Tasks above.

• Any pages that you've shared with only select individuals will appear under Shared.

• You'll see this category in your sidebar as soon as you invite someone to join a private page.

• Other members of your workspace who haven't been invited can't view these pages. This is helpful for one-on-one meeting notes, for instance.

• If you have more than 7 pages in the Shared section, you'll see some additional options to help you stay organized!

  • Click View all to open the Shared section pop-up.

  • Choose which pages you'd like pinned to your sidebar, and copy page links easily!

  • You can sort your shared pages by Relevance or Last edited.

If you're using a Plus, Business Enterprise plan, you'll see a section called Teamspaces. Teamspaces are a dedicated area for every team within your organization or company, and can be customized on an individual basis. Learn more about teamspaces →

• Every workspace has at least one default teamspace, which all members will see in their sidebar.

• Any of the pages in default teamspaces in your sidebar can be seen and shared by the other members of the workspace.

In the Teamspaces section, you'll also see any other teamspaces that you are a member of.

• Click the name of any teamspace to reveal or hide its nested pages.

• Keep your sidebar clean by leaving any teamspaces you don't need to access. Hover over the teamspace name and click the ••• button, then Leave teamspace.

• Favorites is where you can pin pages you need to access quickly to the top of your sidebar. This section will appear when you favorite your first page.

• To add a page to your favorites, navigate to it, then click the 🌟 star button at the top right of your Notion window. You'll see it appear under Favorites in your sidebar.

• To remove a page from your favorites, either go to it and re-click the Favorite button to uncheck it. Or, hover over the page in your sidebar and click the ••• icon that appears (or right click). You'll see the option to Remove from Favorites.

At the bottom of the sidebar, there are a couple more workspace essentials.

• Templates: This opens our template picker, where you can create a new page using starter content to help you accomplish any one of 50+ jobs.

• Import: This menu lets you add data from a number of other apps into your Notion workspace. We make it easy for you to move content over from Evernote, Trello, Asana, Word, Google Docs, Dropbox Paper, Quip and more.

• Trash: The Trash contains all the pages you delete. You can drag and drop them in here. You can also click on trash to search, view and restore these pages. 

  • The trash never auto-deletes your content, so you can use it as an archive!

There are several ways to create new pages using Notion's sidebar:

• On hover, you'll see a + sign appear next to every teamspace name.

  • Click to add a page within that teamspace.

  • If you don't see this, then a teamspace owner has disabled editing of the teamspace sidebar. You'll need to contact that teamspace owner to change this setting.

• You'll also see a + sign next to the Private section. Click to add a new page that only you can access.

• There's also a + New Page button at the bottom of your sidebar.

  • This creates a new page in preview mode, letting you start a new page and then choose where to put it in your workspace (or one of your other workspaces) using a dropdown menu. If you don't choose, it will default to your Private section.

• Lastly, if you hover over any existing page in your sidebar, you'll see a + appear. Click that to add a page nested inside that page.

Once you've created a page, you can access options to Delete, Duplicate, Copy link to the page, Rename, or Move that page directly from the sidebar.

• Hover over any page and click the ••• icon that appears (or right click). You'll see the following menu, as well as who last edited the page and when.

• When you choose Move To, another menu will pop up, letting you choose any other workspace or page you want to move the page into. Use the text box to quickly search and press enter to move the page.

It doesn't take much to move pages around your sidebar. Just drag and drop!

A few things we'll point out:

• Nest pages by dragging one into another. You'll see the selected page highlight blue.

• You can also drag pages out of pages they were once nested inside.

• We'll say it one more time here: If you drag a page from a shared section (Teamspaces or Shared) into Private, other folks will lose access. So make sure that's what you want to do.

Your sidebar is elastic — configure it however is most helpful for you.

• Just click and drag the right edge to resize it.

• And click the << that appears on hover to collapse your sidebar completely. It'll slide back out when you hover over the left-hand edge of the window.

• You can reopen it by clicking the ☰ button at the top left.

• You can also collapse/hide the Favorites, Workspace, Shared, or Private sections of your sidebar. Just click on those headings to hide or reveal them.

There are two ways to delete pages from your sidebar:

• Click on the ••• icon that appears when you hover over a page (or right click on it) and select Delete.

• Drag a page from your workspace into the Trash. This will delete all the sub-pages nested within that page too (including database items).

When you first sign into Notion, you'll see a collection of templates already in your sidebar next to + icons. These are suggestions that aren't yet part of your workspace.

• To add them, click the + and they become yours to edit any way you want.

• To hide them, hover and click Hide.

• You can always bring templates you hide back by clicking Templates at the bottom of your sidebar.