Main page → Your dashboard → Notion databases and views
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Notion is a Software as a Service (SaaS) that makes it possible to create shared, interactive webpages with lots of functionality. The “Blocks” theme comes from its basic principle of providing everything as blocks. Above is a heading block. There are many different block types including databases and pages. Each row in a database is also a page. And it can go down as deep as you like.
You can think of a database like a table of information. In Notion, rows are also called “pages” because they open up to show a page. Rows also get other names like “cards” and “items” because of how they can be presented. The columns in the database table are also called properties. When you open a row in a database, you’ll see these properties listed at the top.
Views are how information in a database is presented. A view can filter the data to show only some rows, such as those where the “Status” property is “For review”. Views can also show just some of the database properties, while leaving the rest hidden.
Views are often shown as a collection of tabs, each containing their own view. Extra tabs are indicated at the right with “n more…”. While it is useful to only use the one database for all views in a collection, it is not required. So sometimes you might see views from different databases in the one collection.
If there is not enough room to show tabs across the top, extra tabs are indicated by a dropdown next to the current view.
To get a feeling for what can be changed in a view, it can help if you think of them as views into the data that exists in the database. So if you change the name of a row in a view, it changes that in the database and affects everyone. If you change the name of a column in a view, that changes the database structure for everyone.
But if you hide or show a column in a view, it only affects that view on that page.
If you you change the filter or sort order in a view, it only affects the person who made that change. You’ll see an option to reset the view if you do this.
If you click “Save for everyone” it will change what rows show for everyone who looks at that view.
It is helpful to keep views locked unless you intend to change them. You can unlock collections of views by finding the option after clicking the ⋯ ellipsis in the top-right corner of the views. Make sure you lock it again when you’re finished.