Views, filters & sorts

There are six different ways to visualize your content within a database. Here's a high level overview of each layout:

• Table: Tables allow you to see your database pages as rows, with every property represented by a column.

• Board: This view groups your items by property. For example, you could use it as a Kanban board to move tasks from one status to another as you make progress on them.

• Timeline: Use your database to plot project milestones on a timeline so you can see when they’re happening and how long they’ll take to complete.

• Calendar: Calendar view displays your items based on their Date property.

• List: Lists are a very clean, minimal layout of your database items.

• Gallery: This view is useful for highlighting images. You can edit your gallery to show images contained in the Files & media property — otherwise, the gallery will show any content that the database page contains.

• Chart: This view visualizes your database items in a bar, line, or donut chart so you can easily analyze and report on the data.

You can also create, share, and gather information using forms, which are connected to databases.

When you first create a database, you'll need to choose the layout of the default view. After this, you can create a new view by selecting + next to your existing views. Depending on your screen size, you may have to open the dropdown next to your current view and select Add view.

You can also provide others with information by giving your view a description. To do this:

1. Select a view → Edit view.

2. Select ⓘ next to your view’s name, then enter your description.

3. When you hover over a view, you will see its description.

You can reorder your views by dragging them. If you have a lot of views, you can select {#} more... next to your views to do this.

In your sidebar, views show up as nested items inside any full page database. You can tell they are views because they'll have a • to their left. Click on any view in your sidebar to jump right to it.

When you’re in a given view, click its name to rename, duplicate, delete, copy its link, or edit its components. You can also edit view components by clicking the ••• at the top right of the database.

Each view of the database has several components that you can customize:

• Layout: Choose how you want your database to be visually organized.

• Properties: Show or hide database properties for each view.

• Filters: Add criteria based on property values to show or hide data.

• Sorts: Sort by a property to change the order that pages are displayed in.

• Groups: Group your data by the values in a property.

You can copy an anchor link to this specific view of your database so you can share it elsewhere.

1. Click the ••• icon at the top right of your table.

2. Click Copy link to {view} and the URL will copy to your clipboard so you can paste it.

Within each view, you can choose how you'd like database pages to open. There are three options:

• Side peek: Open pages on the right side of the database. The rest of the database view continues to be interactive on the left.

• Center peek: Open pages in a focused, center modal.

• Full page: Open pages as full pages directly.

1. To change the setting per view, click the ••• at the top right of your database, and open the Layout menu.

2. Scroll down and change the Open pages in setting.

Notion makes it easy to filter your database so it only displays the items that meet specified criteria, i.e. have (or don't have) certain properties. These filters can be as simple or complex as you like!

To filter the entries you see in a database view:

1. Click Filter at the top of your database.

2. In the dropdown that appears, choose the property you'd like to filter by.

3. This filter will now show up at the top of your database. Click the filter icon to see and edit all of the filters that have been applied to your database.

4. Add another filter by clicking the filter icon. You can have as many filters as you'd like!

You can create more specific database views and combine AND and OR logic by using filter groups. These can be nested up to three layers deep! Here's how:

1. Click the filter icon at the top of your database → Add advanced filter.

2. A new menu will pop up. Here, you can choose the properties that you'd like to filter by, and customize the AND and OR logic of the advanced filter.

3. In the example below, we're filtering the table view of our Roadmap so that all the entries have to meet the criteria that include both AND and OR logic.

You can sort your database so that items are displayed based on properties appearing in ascending or descending order.

For example, you can order them based on priority, or last edited, or alphabetically.

1. Click ⇅ at the top of your database.

2. In the dropdown that appears, choose the property you'd like to sort by.

3. This sort will now show up at the top of your database. Click to edit it.

4. You can add as many sorts as you want, or remove them by clicking the X to their right.

5. Change the order that multiple sorts are applied by dragging them up or down using ⋮⋮.

You can group your database by different properties on your table to visualize them in different ways.

1. Click the ••• menu and find Group. You can group by nearly any property type.

2. The database will now group by values of that property. Each group includes a 👁️ to the left, so you can quickly hide groups and focus on what you need.

3. You can sort your database groups by selecting Sort and choosing to sort manually or sort by the options provided (alphabetical, ascending, and more).

4. Empty groups can also be hidden from view with the Hide empty groups toggle.

You can search for specific content in your database.

1. Click 🔎 at the top right and type the word(s) you're looking for in page titles or properties.

2. You'll see your database change in real-time to only show the items that fit that criteria.

If you have a large database, it's probably tedious to keep moving back and forth between properties to compare their data.

Instead you can freeze one column, which will cause it to stay visible on the left side no matter where you scroll in the database.

1. To freeze a column, click the name of the column and click Freeze up to column.

2. To unfreeze a column, click the name of the column and click Unfreeze column.