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Why does anyone use Notion over Excel and Notepad? I never understood their rise to such popularity.

DandyDev 3y ago
Have you ever used Notion? Feature-wise, it has nothing to do with spreadsheets, so the comparison with Excel is irrelevant. Comparing it to Notepad is only remotely applicable in that both could be used to take notes. As to why it is so popular: despite its faults, it offers a very slick experience for note taking, building a knowledge-base/wiki and project management and anything in-between really. I find the way you can store data in a structured way using Notion databases and present it in different forms very useful.
outworlder 3y ago
A better comparison would be Obsidian or Logseq. If you are trying to do those things on Excel... geez.
- echelon 3y ago
  If Obsidian grew team / cloud features, that would be pretty slick.
  - deafpolygon 3y ago
    If that were to happen, I'd switch to something else. I love the single player mode of Obsidian.
echelon 3y ago
My team uses Notion and I begrudgingly adopted it. I'm not one to dictate. The UI is clunky. It's not as bad as Atlassian software, but it makes me miss Google Docs. I'm hoping Gsuite grows ticket and wiki support, because then I can use Gsuite for everything.
- esafak 3y ago
  GSuite has barely changed since it came out; let's be real.
- Spivak 3y ago
  There are a lot of criticisms I think I could level at Notion but clunky would be one of the last. I'm actually curious what you use Notion for that doesn't jive well.
  - echelon 3y ago
    Any time I drag media around, it bogs my system down like crazy (I'm on Linux). Nothing seems to snap to the "right" places. My brain also isn't mapping to the Notion way of doing things (which is orthogonal to the other issues).
esafak 3y ago
It is multi-functional. You can make it behave like spreadsheet, notepad, or database. All in the same document. So a better question might be "Why use Excel?"
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
My work uses notion. We have to write a lot, and I need to write a lot of mathematics. Writing math on notion pages is like pulling teeth. Till last year, I was writing my docs in markdown on my computer (using emacs), and then uploading using this library for markdown-to-notion-import [1]. But the notion api has changed, and the library no longer works, and I am not sure what to do now. [1] https://github.com/Cobertos/md2notion https://github.com/Cobertos/md2notion
- esafak 3y ago
  As if Excel and notepad have good latex support!
  - abdullahkhalids 3y ago
    I can pretty much read latex like the guys in the Matrix read the code to see the video. No real need to compile. So for me any plain text editor is good enough for latex. Emacs is better cuz of the nice ways of moving around.
InitialLastName 3y ago
I don't love Notion for some things, but I haven't found anything better for mixing structured data and notes in a flexible-but-consistent way. If I wanted to do something like their databases (large sets of notes with enforced fields of different types including relational links, tags, attached files, with dead easy data entry, autocompletion, search and extraction, all presented in an acceptably pleasing way) in Excel, it would take me hours of tweaking. In Notion, it's 10 minutes before I'm starting to enter data (not to mention the price).
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  Data validation in excel is literally a couple of clicks. I am not sure UI of Notion is better than Excel but that's a person preference but I am sure Excel can handle many orders of magnitude more data than Notion.

Have you ever used Notion? Feature-wise, it has nothing to do with spreadsheets, so the comparison with Excel is irrelevant. Comparing it to Notepad is only remotely applicable in that both could be used to take notes. As to why it is so popular: despite its faults, it offers a very slick experience for note taking, building a knowledge-base/wiki and project management and anything in-between really. I find the way you can store data in a structured way using Notion databases and present it in different forms very useful.

outworlder 3y ago

A better comparison would be Obsidian or Logseq. If you are trying to do those things on Excel... geez.

echelon 3y ago
If Obsidian grew team / cloud features, that would be pretty slick.
- deafpolygon 3y ago
  If that were to happen, I'd switch to something else. I love the single player mode of Obsidian.

echelon 3y ago

My team uses Notion and I begrudgingly adopted it. I'm not one to dictate. The UI is clunky. It's not as bad as Atlassian software, but it makes me miss Google Docs. I'm hoping Gsuite grows ticket and wiki support, because then I can use Gsuite for everything.

esafak 3y ago
GSuite has barely changed since it came out; let's be real.
Spivak 3y ago
There are a lot of criticisms I think I could level at Notion but clunky would be one of the last. I'm actually curious what you use Notion for that doesn't jive well.
- echelon 3y ago
  Any time I drag media around, it bogs my system down like crazy (I'm on Linux). Nothing seems to snap to the "right" places. My brain also isn't mapping to the Notion way of doing things (which is orthogonal to the other issues).

esafak 3y ago

It is multi-functional. You can make it behave like spreadsheet, notepad, or database. All in the same document. So a better question might be "Why use Excel?"

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

My work uses notion. We have to write a lot, and I need to write a lot of mathematics. Writing math on notion pages is like pulling teeth. Till last year, I was writing my docs in markdown on my computer (using emacs), and then uploading using this library for markdown-to-notion-import [1]. But the notion api has changed, and the library no longer works, and I am not sure what to do now. [1] https://github.com/Cobertos/md2notion https://github.com/Cobertos/md2notion

esafak 3y ago
As if Excel and notepad have good latex support!
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  I can pretty much read latex like the guys in the Matrix read the code to see the video. No real need to compile. So for me any plain text editor is good enough for latex. Emacs is better cuz of the nice ways of moving around.

InitialLastName 3y ago

I don't love Notion for some things, but I haven't found anything better for mixing structured data and notes in a flexible-but-consistent way. If I wanted to do something like their databases (large sets of notes with enforced fields of different types including relational links, tags, attached files, with dead easy data entry, autocompletion, search and extraction, all presented in an acceptably pleasing way) in Excel, it would take me hours of tweaking. In Notion, it's 10 minutes before I'm starting to enter data (not to mention the price).

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Data validation in excel is literally a couple of clicks. I am not sure UI of Notion is better than Excel but that's a person preference but I am sure Excel can handle many orders of magnitude more data than Notion.