In this Notion Foundations lesson, you’ll learn more about blocks which are essential to getting the most out of Notion. We touched on the basic blocks in the previous lesson, Starting Out With Notion.
Notion describes a block as:
Different types of content you can add to a page: a to-do item, an image, a code block, an uploaded file.
Notion.so
You can think about them as different building blocks that you can mix and match to design your own page or dashboard. Below is an example of a few blocks put together to create a daily journal.
Blocks In Notion
As you can see, this page is made up of several blocks. Some of the commonly used ones are:
- Text – paragraph of text
- Headings – Titles and subtitles can be broken down into three levels (H1, H2, and H3)
- Image – along with images, you can also embed Youtube videos
- Databases – we’ll cover this in more detail in the next lesson
- Pages – Subpages also form part of blocks. As described in the previous lesson, pages can live in a nested page structure
How To Add Blocks To Your Page
The power of Notion is in the ability for you to piece together your own blocks. There are two ways to create a new block in Notion.
- Start by typing “/” anywhere on the page and it will pull up the blocks menu. Scroll through the list and either hit Enter or select it with the mouse.
- Alternatively, you can click on the “+” to the left of a block.
There are several blocks that you can also pull up by typing in the shortcut code. To find the full list, check out Notion’s keyboard shortcuts.
How To Modify And Move Existing Blocks
So you’ve started adding blocks and you’ve realized you’d prefer to add a toggle header instead of a standard Heading 2. Click on the six dots on the left of a block – this will call up the block menu. If you click, hold, and drag the block, you can also move it around.
Within the block menu, you’ll see several options.
- Delete
- Duplicate
- Turn Into – modify your existing block into a new type
- Turn Into Page – turns the block into a new subpage that is nested within the current page.
- Copy Link – creates a URL to the block. This helps you to create links around your workspace and help you to navigate to specific sections of a page.
- Move To – move your block to another page
- Comment – similar to Excel, you can add comments to a block. You can find a tutorial on how to turn comments off here.
- Color – you can adjust the text or background color of a block
If we focus on the “Turn into”, you will find a list of block types that you can change your existing block into. In the example below, the tick next to Heading 2 indicates the current block type.
What Is A Synced Block In Notion?
A synced block is a block, or groups of blocks that can be copied to other areas of your workspace and they are all kept in sync.
Synced blocks are helpful for placing identical content across several pages – for example, a navigation bar menu. You’ll only need to update your menu once and it’s updated across Notion. Pro tip – you don’t need to update the original source either.
You can start by creating a synced block from scratch or by converting an existing block into a synced block.
New Synced Block
To create a new block, type in /sync and select the option under Advanced Blocks.
Synced blocks are identified with a red border – anything you add to this block can now be copied and synced across any page in Notion.
Convert An Existing Block Into A Synced Block
Highlight the blocks that you want to replicate and click on the six-dot block menu. Go to “Turn into” and select “Synced block”.
Again, the red border identifies that the group of blocks is now part of a synced block and you can copy-paste it onto any other page.
This is really powerful when you combine it with template pages. If you have several blocks that make up your daily journal, you don’t need to replicate changes over and over. Saving you time! Check out our guide on How To Save A Page As A Template In Notion.
Now that you know how to use blocks in Notion, I suggest you experiment and play around with the various blocks. This will help you to unlock the potential of Notion!
In the next lesson, we move on to Page Layouts to help you design visually appealing pages and dashboards.
