What You Lose Moving OneNote to Notion, and What to Do About Each

The words make it across. Headings, lists, tables, images, to-dos, web links, and attachments under 5 MB all arrive in Notion as normal, editable blocks. What gets lost is anything that depends on where something sits on the OneNote page: freeform layouts, the position of handwriting next to the text it annotates, and links from one OneNote page to another. A few smaller things also drop out, such as merged table cells, superscript, and password-protected sections. Most people can ignore most of this list. The useful step is to find the two or three items your own notebook depends on and handle those before you start.

Everything below describes a migration with Note Bridge, checked against how it converts pages. If you are still choosing between a migration tool and exporting files, start with Does Notion import OneNote? instead.

The short list

In OneNote	In Notion	What to do
Text, headings, bullet and numbered lists	Same, including deeply nested lists	Nothing
Tables	Notion tables	Check any table with merged cells
Merged table cells	Split apart. The text stays in the first cell, the rest are empty	Retype the layout in Notion if it matters
To-do tags	Notion checkboxes, ticked or not as they were	Nothing
Other tags	A small emoji in front of the line: ⭐ important, ❓ question, 💡 remember for later, 📖 definition, 🏷️ anything else	Nothing, unless you filter by tags today
Text colors and highlights	The closest of Notion's colors	Nothing
Equations	Notion equations. If one cannot be converted, its text stays as plain text	Look over the formulas you care about
Superscript and subscript	Plain text, so x² reads as x2	Fix the few that change meaning
Images, PDFs, other attachments	Uploaded to Notion	Re-add anything over 5 MB
Audio and video	Playable blocks in Notion	Re-add anything over 5 MB
Handwriting and drawings	One image at the bottom of the page, colors kept	See below
Freeform page layout	Content runs top to bottom	See below
Links to websites	Still links	Nothing
Links to other OneNote pages	Not pointed at the new Notion pages	See below
Password-protected sections	Not migrated	Unlock first

The cases worth a closer look

Handwriting and drawings

All the ink on a page is turned into one image and placed at the end of that page. The strokes and colors survive. What does not survive is where they were. If you circled a word or wrote a note in the margin of a typed paragraph, the circle and the note now sit below everything else, away from the text they referred to.

For pages that are mostly handwriting, such as lecture notes taken with a pen, this is fine: the image is the page. For typed pages with occasional annotations, decide whether the annotations still make sense on their own. If they do not, save that page as a PDF from OneNote and keep it in Notion next to the migrated copy.

Freeform pages

OneNote lets you drop text boxes anywhere on an open canvas. Notion pages are a single column that runs from top to bottom, so every route into Notion has to put those boxes in some order. Note Bridge reads them top to bottom, which works for most pages because most people write that way.

It breaks down on pages where the arrangement is the content: a mind map, a flowchart built from text boxes, a two-column comparison laid out by hand. The text is all there, but you have to read it as a list. For those pages, a PDF is the only format that keeps the picture. Keep one, or redraw the diagram in Notion if you still use it.

Links between OneNote pages

A link to a website stays a working link. A link from one OneNote page to another does not get rewired to the matching Notion page, because the Notion page did not exist when the link was written. Depending on how the link was stored, it either becomes plain text or keeps pointing back at OneNote.

If you have a few index pages that link to everything else, fix those by hand after the migration: in Notion, type @ and the page name to link it. If your whole notebook is a web of links, budget an afternoon for this.

Files over 5 MB

Images, attachments, audio, and video larger than 5 MB are skipped. Each one is listed by name and size in the migration report, so you know exactly which to add back by hand. The usual culprits are recordings and scanned PDFs. For long recordings, a link to the file in OneDrive is often more practical than uploading it into Notion anyway.

Password-protected sections

Note Bridge cannot read sections that are locked with a password. The scan lists every section it could not read and leaves those out, so nothing goes missing silently. If you want a locked section in Notion, remove its password in OneNote first, then scan again.

Checking the result

When the migration finishes, open its report before you look at Notion. It lists the files that were skipped, grouped by reason (too large, not found, upload failed, or a file type Notion does not accept), and it notes any equations that fell back to plain text and any merged cells that were split. Treat it as your checklist.

Pages that fail are retried automatically. If a page still fails, the page credit for it goes back to your account and you can retry it from the migration page. Then open a handful of pages in OneNote and Notion side by side, starting with the ones where layout or handwriting matters most.

If you are moving thousands of pages, migrating a large OneNote notebook covers timing and the checks to do before you start.

FAQ

Does handwriting come across?

Yes. All the ink on a page becomes one image at the bottom of that page, with its strokes and colors. Its position relative to the typed text is lost.

Do OneNote tags carry over?

To-do tags become Notion checkboxes. Important, question, remember-for-later, and definition tags become ⭐, ❓, 💡, and 📖 in front of the line. Any other tag gets 🏷️. They are part of the text, not a property you can filter on.

Will my nested lists stay nested?

Yes, at any depth.

Why are some of my images missing?

Most likely they were over 5 MB. The migration report lists every skipped file with its size and the reason, so you can add them to Notion by hand.

Would exporting to PDF or Word lose less?

Not overall. A PDF keeps the look of the page, including layout and ink position, but when Notion imports a PDF, headings and equations may become plain text and colors are dropped (Notion Help: Import data into Notion). Word keeps text editable but leaves the notebook structure behind, and ink and attachments usually need cleanup (How to Export OneNote in 2026). For a few layout-heavy pages, a PDF kept next to the migrated copy gives you both.