The Ultimate Guide to Mapping Notion Databases to SharePoint Lists

You love Notion. I know you do.

It’s fluid, it’s pretty, and you can structure your entire business life exactly how your brain works. It’s like playing with digital LEGOs where the pieces never run out. You can turn a page into a database, a database into a calendar, and a calendar into a Kanban board with two clicks.

But then reality hits.

Maybe your company is scaling and "shadow IT" is no longer cute. Maybe your IT director is demanding stricter governance. Or maybe you’ve just been acquired and thrust into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Suddenly, you’re staring down the barrel of a massive migration: moving everything from your beloved, flexible Notion workspace into the rigid, rule-following world of SharePoint.

If you just shivered, I don’t blame you.

Moving from Notion to SharePoint isn't like moving from one apartment to another that has a slightly different layout. It’s like moving from a free-spirited yurt on an open prairie to a highly zoned, regulation-compliant skyscraper in downtown Manhattan.

Both are places to live. Both serve a purpose. But the underlying structure—the very physics of how they operate—is fundamentally different.

At ClonePartner, we’re engineer-led migration specialists. We don’t just press "export" and hope for the best. We’ve handled over 750 successful migrations, often involving complex, custom script-work to ensure zero downtime. We live in the messy intersection between "flexible modern tools" and "enterprise behemoths."

And I’m here to tell you: You can map Notion databases to SharePoint lists. You can even make it look good and function similarly to what you’re used to. But you have to stop thinking in "Notion" and start thinking in "Structure."

Here is the ultimate guide to making that translation work, featuring real-world examples from a project we recently tackled.

Stop Trying to Force Notion Logic into SharePoint

Before we touch a single column, you need to understand why most people fail at this. The failure usually happens in the brain, not in the software.

Notion is built on the concept of "Everything is a Block." A page can contain a database, which can contain another page, which contains text. It’s incredibly nested and flexible. You can drag a block from one page to another, and it just works.

SharePoint doesn't care about your blocks. It cares about Containers.

• You have Site Collections.
• Inside those, you have Sites.
• Inside those, you have Lists and Libraries.
• Inside those, you have Items and Documents.

It is rigid. It has rules. It has permissions hierarchies that do not bend.

When you migrate, you aren't just moving data; you are re-architecting it to fit these containers. If you try to shove Notion’s flexibility directly into SharePoint without a translation layer, you will end up with a digital dumpster fire: files you can't find, lists that don't load, and a team that refuses to log in.

We recently walked a client, David, through this exact process for his company’s "Credentialing" workspace. The principles we used there are universal, and I’m going to break them down for you.

First, Build the House (Before Moving the Furniture)

In Notion, you probably have a top-level Workspace, and within that, you have major pages that act as hubs. You might have a page called "Operations" with six databases linked inside it.

In the Microsoft world, do not try to cram your entire company's history into one single list or one generic site.

Your Notion Workspace generally maps best to a SharePoint Site Collection. The major "hubs" within Notion—like David's "Credentialing" area—should become their own SharePoint Sites (or Subsites, depending on your architecture).

Think of this as framing the house before you try to hang the drywall. If you get the site architecture wrong, no amount of data mapping will save you.

The One-to-One Mapping Rule

This is where the rubber meets the road. A Notion Database is, at its core, a table of data. The closest equivalent in SharePoint is a SharePoint List.

(Note: If your Notion database is primarily storing files, use a Document Library. But for structured data—text, dates, status selects—it’s a List.)

Let's look at how we handled David’s setup. He had three core interconnected databases in Notion:

1. Agencies: A master list of organizations they work with.
2. Address Push: A specific operational workflow database.
3. Credentialing Checklist: The specific tasks associated with each agency.

We didn't try to get clever or combine them into one mega-spreadsheet. We went for a direct, one-to-one mapping.

We created three distinct SharePoint Lists named exactly the same things: Agencies, Address Push, and Credentialing Checklist.

Then comes the column translation. Most things are straightforward, but you need to be precise. Here is your "Rosetta Stone" for data types:

• Notion Text/Title → SharePoint Single Line of Text.
• Notion Number → SharePoint Number (Check your decimals!).
• Notion Date → SharePoint Date and Time.
• Notion Select/Multi-Select → SharePoint Choice column.
• • Pro Tip: You have to manually configure the choices in SharePoint to match your Notion tags, or your migration script needs to create them on the fly.
• Notion Person → SharePoint Person or Group column.
• • Why this matters: In Notion, tagging a user is casual. In SharePoint, this field links to their Active Directory profile. This is crucial for accountability and automated emails later on.
• Notion Files & Media → SharePoint Attachments section of the list item.

The Engineer’s Note: Be very careful here. Notion is forgiving; SharePoint is not. If you have a "Number" column in Notion where someone accidentally typed "TBD" three years ago, Notion ignores it. If you try to shove that "TBD" into a SharePoint number column during an API migration, the whole thing explodes.

At ClonePartner, we write custom scripts to validate and sanitize data types before the injection phase. We scrub the data so you don't have to clean up 50,000 errored list items manually.

Keeping Your Data Connected

This is where most DIY migrations fall apart.

Notion makes relationships incredibly easy. You type /relation, pick a database, and boom—your "Credentialing Checklist" is linked to the "Agency." You can click through seamlessly.

SharePoint is… clunkier. But it can do it using the Lookup Column.

In our example with David, the "Credentialing Checklist" list needed to know which "Agency" it belonged to.

1. We went into the "Credentialing Checklist" SharePoint List settings.
2. We created a new column.
3. We selected "Lookup" as the type.
4. We told SharePoint: "Look at the 'Agencies' list, and grab the 'Title' (Name) column."

The Crucial "Back-Reference" In Notion, when you create a relation, it usually automatically creates a corresponding property in the other database (the back-reference). In SharePoint, you often have to manage this link explicitly.

We ensured that the Address Push list had a clear back-reference to the main Agency list. If you skip this, you end up with orphaned data floating in the void that you can't group or filter later.

How to Make SharePoint Actually Look Like Notion

Okay, so you’ve got your lists and your lookups. You open SharePoint, and what do you see?

A dry, boring, gray spreadsheet view.

Your team is going to revolt. They miss the Notion dashboard where they could click an Agency on the left and see the relevant tasks on the right. They miss the visual hierarchy.

Wait—you can actually do that in SharePoint now.

This was the "aha" moment in our walkthrough with David. You don't have to rely solely on the default List views. You can build Site Pages.

This is the secret sauce to making SharePoint feel less like a morgue and more like a modern tool:

1. Create a Dashboard Page: Don't just send people to the raw list URL. Create a modern SharePoint Site Page. Call it something useful, like "New Agencies Overview."
2. Embed Your Lists: On this page, add two "List" web parts side-by-side.
3. • On the left: The "Agencies" list.
   • On the right: The "Credentialing Checklist" list.
3. The Magic Trick: Dynamic Filtering: Right now, you just have two unrelated lists sitting next to each other.
4. • Click on the web part for the checklist on the right.
   • Go to the settings pane.
   • Toggle on "Dynamic filtering."
   • Set the rules: "Filter items in this list where the 'Agency Lookup' column matches the selected item in the 'Agencies List' web part."

Boom.

Now, when a user clicks "Melissa's Agency" on the left list, the list on the right instantly filters to show only Melissa’s checklist items. You have successfully recreated the fluid, relational view of Notion inside the rigid structure of SharePoint.

Don't Overcomplicate the Static Pages

Not everything in Notion is a database. You have those beautiful pages for "Company Core Values," onboarding guides, or team wikis.

Do not—I repeat, do not—try to force these into Lists.

These should become standard SharePoint Site Pages or News Posts. They handle rich text, images, and embedding perfectly fine. In our project with David, we took his "Core Values" page and simply made it a static Site Page. It took five minutes.

Don't over-engineer the simple stuff. Save your brainpower for the databases.

Please Don’t Use CSVs

I know what you’re thinking. "This sounds complicated. I have a button in Notion that says 'Export to CSV.' Can't I just do that and import it into SharePoint?"

Sure. You can also try to fix a delicate Swiss watch with a hammer. You might get the pieces inside, but it’s never going to tick again.

Here is what happens when you rely on CSV exports for complex database migrations:

1. Relationships Die: CSVs are flat files. That intricate web of connections between your Agencies and Checklists? Gone. You'll have to manually rebuild thousands of connections one by one.
2. Metadata Disappears: 'Created By' dates, 'Last Edited By' users, and timestamps often get wiped out or overwritten by the person doing the import. Suddenly, every record looks like it was created today by you. Audit trail = destroyed.
3. File Attachments Break: Good luck migrating those PDFs, images, and contracts attached to Notion rows via CSV. The CSV will just give you a text link that breaks as soon as you delete the Notion page.
4. Data Type Errors: SharePoint is picky. If your CSV has a slightly misspelled option in a "Select" column, the import will reject that entire row or leave the field blank.

The Anxiety-Free Way to Migrate

Look, we’re engineers. We love solving puzzles. And the puzzle of moving high-trust data from a flexible schema (Notion) to a rigid schema (SharePoint) without breaking business continuity is one of the toughest puzzles out there.

We specialize in high-trust, secure solutions, combining the speed of a modern product with the accountability of a dedicated expert service.

At ClonePartner, we don’t use off-the-shelf migration wizards that choke on complex data. We build custom scripts tailored to your specific Notion architecture.

• Data Migration: We handle all formats (PDF, CSV, JSON, API) and complete migrations in days, not weeks.
• Custom Integrations: We ensure your new SharePoint lists talk to your other tools (Salesforce, Slack, Jira) immediately.
• Continuous Data Sync: Need to keep Notion running for one team while another moves to SharePoint? We can sync them in real-time.

If reading this guide made you feel confident, go for it. The structure works.

But if reading this gave you a headache and you’d rather have a team of experts handle it while you focus on actually running your business, let's talk. We turn complex migrations into "that was easy" moments.

Book a Free Consultation with ClonePartner today. Let’s get your data moved correctly the first time.