Notion Fundamentals: How to Create and Edit Pages

Notion pages are the core building blocks that also drive navigation, so learning how to create and customize them is the fastest route to understanding everything else in the workspace. A page in Notion is essentially a flexible canvas: it can hold text, dashboards, and even database entries. Just as importantly, pages nested inside other pages become part of the navigation structure—clicking through page links and using breadcrumbs to show where someone is in the hierarchy.

The lesson breaks down what “page” means in practice. A large dashboard can be a page, a database row can open into a page, and a blank canvas is also a page. Pages can live in three places: as top-level pages in the workspace, inside other pages (visible through breadcrumbs and nested navigation), or inside databases. When a page sits inside a database, it shows properties—like a “tags” property—because the database defines metadata for those pages. That distinction matters because it changes what controls appear and how content is organized.

From there, the walkthrough moves to building an example page from scratch. Creating a new page can be done from the “add page” area by selecting “new page,” then choosing “empty” to start blank. After naming the page and adding basic text, the customization begins. An icon can be added (either a random emoji, a linked emoji, or an uploaded image), and once set, it appears consistently across the page header, breadcrumbs, and navigation. A cover can be added similarly: Notion offers random defaults, color/gradient options, and Unsplash images, plus the ability to link or upload custom media. The cover can also be repositioned to improve the layout.

To match the look of the example, the page’s typography and layout settings are adjusted via the three-dot menu. Options include switching between serif, monospaced, and default fonts, and changing text size (for example, using “small” for text-heavy pages). A “full-width” toggle is also covered: it’s not very useful for single-column text because lines become too long, but it becomes valuable for multi-column layouts later on.

Two collaboration features round out the page toolset: page comments and backlinks. Comments can be attached to the entire page, and backlinks appear when the page is linked from elsewhere in the workspace. The lesson demonstrates creating a backlink using a link mention flow (via Control L), then shows how backlinks can be displayed as a popover, expanded, or turned off entirely. Page comments can also be expanded or hidden for a cleaner interface.

Finally, navigation inside nested page structures is clarified. Breadcrumbs reveal the current location in the hierarchy, and pages can be nested repeatedly (“turtles all the way down”). A key gotcha is how databases behave in the sidebar: when inside a database, the sidebar shows database views rather than listing the individual pages inside that database. Finding those pages requires going to the database itself and using search or sorting—topics saved for later lessons.