How to import Markdown back into Notion

A backup is only half the story. The other half is getting content back in when you need it — and because Notion both exports and imports Markdown, a Markdown backup doubles as a restore path. Here's how the round trip works.

Importing Markdown pages

To bring Markdown files into a workspace:

1. In the sidebar, click Import (or use the ••• menu on a page → Import).
2. Choose Markdown.
3. Select one or more .md files. Each becomes a page.

Notion parses the Markdown structure — headings, lists, quotes, code blocks — into native blocks. For a single page or a small set, this is quick and clean.

Importing databases from CSV

Databases restore from CSV:

1. Click Import and choose CSV.
2. Select the file. Notion creates a new database with a column per CSV header.
3. Check the property types — Notion guesses them, and it sometimes guesses wrong (a date column read as text, for example). Fix any that are off.

This is why keeping clean headers in your exports matters: they become your column names on the way back in.

What imports cleanly, and what needs a hand

Set expectations before a big restore:

• Clean: headings, paragraphs, lists, quotes, code, basic tables, and most inline formatting.
• Needs attention: database property types, internal links between pages (which may need re-pointing), and nested folder structure (Notion flattens some hierarchy on import).
• Won't fully return: relations and rollups that were computed live — you'll re-establish those, since a CSV holds values, not live connections.

Planning a restore before you need one

The time to learn your restore process is not during an incident. A ten-minute dry run pays for itself:

1. Take last week's Markdown backup.
2. Import a few pages and one database into a scratch workspace.
3. Note what came in clean and what needed fixing.

Now you know your real recovery time, and you've turned an abstract "we have backups" into a process you've actually walked through.

Why this makes Markdown the right backup format

Some backup formats are great for reading and useless for restoring. Markdown is both: it's human-readable and it's a native Notion import format. That round-trip property is the whole reason Backup Notion exports to Markdown — so the copy you keep isn't just an archive you can read, it's content you can put back.