Migrate from Notion to kDrive: Complete Step-by-Step Guide

Notion is powerful, but its data stays in the US, its pricing keeps rising, and synchronising documents with Office suites remains complex. kDrive + OnlyOffice offers a European alternative worth exploring. Here's how to migrate.

Why Migrate from Notion to kDrive?

• Data sovereignty: Notion is an American company, servers in the US. kDrive is hosted in Switzerland.
• Native Office compatibility: OnlyOffice integrated into kDrive natively reads DOCX, XLSX, PPTX. Notion requires plugins and converters.
• Simplified collaboration: sharing a kDrive file is as simple as sharing a Notion page — but with full version history.
• Price: kDrive starts at €4.23/month for 2 TB vs Notion Team at $16/user/month.

Step 1: Export Your Notion Data

Notion offers two export formats:

1. Markdown + CSV: lightweight, but requires conversion for tables and rich databases.
2. HTML: preserves more formatting, but complex to reuse.

To export: Settings → Export all workspace content → Format: Markdown & CSV → Include subpages: Yes

Step 2: Organise Your kDrive Structure

Before transferring files, plan your kDrive folder structure. A typical organisation:

📁 Company/
  📁 Projects/
    📁 [Project Name]/
      📁 Meeting notes
      📁 Specifications
      📁 Deliverables
  📁 Processes & Documentation/
  📁 HR/
  📁 Finance/
📁 Personal/

Create this structure in kDrive before the migration to avoid massive reorganisation later.

Step 3: Convert Markdown Files

Notion's exported Markdown files can be converted to DOCX with Pandoc (free, open source):

pandoc notion-export.md -o document.docx

For batch conversion (PowerShell/Bash):

# Windows PowerShell
Get-ChildItem *.md | ForEach-Object {
    pandoc $_.FullName -o "$($_.BaseName).docx"
}

These DOCX files open perfectly in OnlyOffice integrated into kDrive.

Step 4: Upload to kDrive

Two methods:

• kDrive desktop client: drag your converted files to the local sync folder. Recommended for large volumes.
• Web interface: drag-and-drop directly into browser for smaller batches.

Step 5: Recreate Notion Databases in kDrive

Notion's databases (kanban, calendars, tables) don't have a direct equivalent in kDrive. Alternatives:

• Table databases: export as CSV, then open in OnlyOffice Calc (Excel equivalent). More powerful for calculations.
• Kanban boards: use kChat (Mattermost) with kanban plugin, or a simple OnlyOffice spreadsheet.
• Project wikis: DOCX documents organised in dedicated folders with a README index file.

Step 6: Train Your Team

kDrive and OnlyOffice don't have Notion's learning curve. Key points to cover:

1. File sharing (link / access rights)
2. Collaborative editing in OnlyOffice
3. Version history (right-click → Version history)
4. Comments and mentions in documents
5. Sync with desktop client

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