Notion is a brilliant blank canvas—until you hit 500 contacts and realize you're building CRM infrastructure, not documenting it. By that point, your contact records are scattered across databases, custom fields are inconsistent, and relationships between people, companies, and deals exist only in your head. When you export to move to a proper CRM, Notion gives you a CSV file and a silent goodbye to nine critical relationship fields. The gap isn't Notion's fault. It was never meant to be a CRM. But if you're migrating to Orin, you need to know exactly what you're losing, where to recover it, and how to rebuild your relationship graph in 30 days without losing momentum. The Nine Fields Notion Exports Flatten When you export your Notion CRM database, you get names, email, phone—and almost everything else becomes unusable in a real CRM. Here's what vanishes: Relationship links to companies. A contact in Notion can point to a company record, but the export breaks that connection. You get a text name, not a structured relationship. Deal associations. Which deals belong to which contact? The export strips this entirely. You'll see deal names in a text field, not linked records. Contact roles at companies. You likely track whether someone is a decision maker, influencer, or end user. That lives in a property, not in the export. Deal stage history. Notion stores your current stage, but not the timeline of how the deal moved through your pipeline. Relationship type. Family relationships, co-founder links, investor connections—these exist as relations in Notion but become plain text on export. Custom field metadata. Select options, formulas, rollups—all gone. You get the output value, not the structure. Last activity timestamps. Notion tracks when a record was last modified, but not when you last communicated with someone. Linked people. Spouse, co-founder, hired referrer—these relations vanish into unlinked text. Pipeline history. Which rep owned this deal last month? What was the value when it closed? Export has no answer. The core problem: Notion's power is relational—everything links to everything. But CSV export is flat. The moment you save to disk, those relationships die. Map Your Notion Schema to Orin Before Export The trick is to reverse-engineer your Notion relationships into data that Orin can read on import. Before you export anything, audit your Notion setup and plan the mapping. Contacts database In Notion, a contact probably has properties like email, phone, company (relation), title, stage, and custom fields. Here's how these map to Orin: Email, phone, name: Direct. Export as-is. Company (relation): Export the company name as text. In Orin, you'll match it to the company record post-import using a lookup or manual reconciliation. Title, role: Direct to Orin contact custom fields. Stage, status: Custom field in Orin. Choose single-select to mirror Notion's options. Last contacted: If Notion has this, export it. Orin can ingest a date. If not, you'll set it manually during migration. Custom fields (text, number, select): Create the same custom fields in Orin before import. Map Notion property names 1:1. Relationships to other contacts: Do not export. You'll rebuild these manually using Orin's relationship features in week 3–4. Deals/Opportunities database Deal name, value, stage, close date: Direct to Orin deal fields. Contact (relation): Export the contact's email as a lookup. After import, use a bulk update to link deals to contacts by email match. Company (relation): Export the company name. Same approach: post-import matching. Deal type, product, custom fields: Map 1:1 to Orin custom fields. Create them first. Deal stage history: Notion doesn't export this. Orin's deal timeline will track it going forward; you won't have historical depth. Linked people: If you track secondary contacts on a deal (not just the primary), export their emails in a separate text field. Rebuild the associations in Orin manually. Companies database Company name, website, industry, size: Direct to Orin. Contact count (rollup): Do not export. Orin will calculate this automatically once contacts are linked. Custom fields: Map 1:1. Three Data Recovery Tactics You cannot fully recover flattened relationships from a CSV file. But you can recover most of them if you're systematic. 1. Export-as-CSV + manual rebuild for critical relationships For deals, companies, and contacts with known relationships, create a separate CSV before you export Notion. Open your Notion database and manually list key relationships: Deal name, primary contact email, company name Contact name, company email, role Contact name, related contact email, relationship type (co-founder, referrer, spouse) Use this as your source of truth during migration. It takes an hour for 500 contacts, and it saves you weeks of detective work later. 2. Export Notion relations as text lookups, then match post-import In Notion, create a formula field that concatenates the relat