How to Duplicate a Notion Template (Step by Step)
How to Duplicate a Notion Template (Step by Step)
One of the best things about Notion is that a great setup someone else built can become yours in a single click. Instead of rebuilding a dashboard from scratch, you copy the whole thing — pages, databases, views, filters, and all — into your own workspace, where it is fully editable and separate from the original. This guide covers how duplicating works, what happens to the databases underneath, how the process differs on desktop and mobile, and the small mistakes that trip people up. The free Notable Dashboard is used throughout as a concrete example you can follow along with.
What “duplicating” actually means in Notion
When a creator shares a template, they publish a Notion page to the web and turn on the option that lets visitors copy it. You are not editing their live page — you are making a full, independent copy in a workspace you control. Once it lands, you can rename it, delete sections, change fields, and add your own data without any of it flowing back to the original. The creator cannot see your version, and future changes they make to their template will not appear in your copy.
This matters because a well-built template is rarely a single page. The Notable Dashboard is a left-hand navigation hub linking out to Tasks & Projects, a Financial Tracker, Goals & Habits, a Content Calendar, Academic and Business Milestones, and Order Management. Duplicating brings all of that across in one action, including the underlying databases those sections read from.
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Grab the Free Template →Step by step: duplicating a template on desktop
The desktop browser or app gives you the most control, so start there if you can.
1. Open the shared template page
Click the template link — for instance, the free Notable Dashboard — and it opens as a read-only public page in your browser. Take a moment to scroll through it so you know what you are copying. On the Notable Dashboard you will see the navigation hub, a live clock and weather widget embedded through indify.co, and a Quick Stats row showing Tasks Due Today, Active Goals, Monthly Revenue, and Upcoming Events.
2. Click the Duplicate button
Look in the top-right corner of the page for a Duplicate button. Clicking it tells Notion you want your own copy. If you are not signed in, Notion will prompt you to log in or create a free account first — you need an account because the copy has to land somewhere.
3. Choose the destination workspace
If your Notion account has more than one workspace — say a personal one and a shared team one — Notion asks which workspace should receive the copy. This is the single most important choice in the whole process, so slow down here. Pick the workspace where you actually want to live in this dashboard day to day. Choosing wrong is the most common duplication mistake, and it is covered in more detail below.
4. Wait for the copy to finish
Notion copies the top-level page and everything nested inside it. For a small template this is instant; for a larger one with several linked databases it can take a few seconds. When it is done, the copied page opens in your sidebar, fully editable and entirely yours.
What happens to linked databases when you duplicate
This is worth understanding because the Notable Dashboard leans heavily on it. Almost everything you see on that dashboard is one database surfaced through multiple linked views, filters, and rollups. The Quick Stats row, for instance, is not typed-in text — each stat is a filtered or rolled-up view of a linked database. Monthly Revenue is a sum of the Amount field from the Financial Tracker where the Type is Income for the current month.
When you duplicate the template, Notion copies the source databases into your workspace and rewires the linked views to point at your new copies rather than the creator’s originals. The relationships hold together: your Tasks & Projects section still filters your tasks, your Recent Orders view still reads your orders, and your Monthly Revenue stat still totals your income. You get a working system, not a pile of disconnected pages.
Sample data usually comes along for the ride — the template ships with example tasks and transactions so the views have something to display, and you can delete those once you add your own. Embedded widgets that rely on an external service, like the indify.co clock and weather, copy across as embeds; you may need to reconfigure them to show your own location.
Duplicating on mobile
You can duplicate templates from the Notion mobile app too, though the experience is tighter on a small screen. If you tap a template link on your phone, it may open in your mobile browser first; for the smoothest result, open it in the Notion app when prompted, which keeps you signed in and makes the destination step cleaner.
The Duplicate button sits at the top of the page, the same as on desktop, but on a phone it can be tucked behind a menu depending on the layout. Tap it, confirm the destination workspace if you are asked, and let the copy complete. Because complex dashboards like the Notable Dashboard have many moving parts, it is genuinely easier to duplicate them on desktop and then use the mobile app afterwards for day-to-day edits.
Common gotchas to avoid
Duplicating into the wrong workspace
This is the big one. If you copy a template into your personal workspace when you meant to put it in a shared team workspace — or vice versa — your teammates will not see it, or private data ends up somewhere too visible. If it happens, do not re-duplicate from the original and lose your edits. Instead, move the page: open it, use the page menu, and choose to move it to the correct workspace. Moving preserves the databases and links.
Template pages versus database templates
“Template” means two different things in Notion, and mixing them up causes frustration. A template page — like the Notable Dashboard — is a full page or workspace you duplicate with the Duplicate button. A database template is a preset for a single new row inside a database: click the dropdown next to the blue “New” button in a database and you get a pre-filled entry, not a whole dashboard. If someone tells you to “use the template” and you are staring at a database, they probably mean that New-button dropdown, not the page-level Duplicate.
Copying only a sub-page by mistake
If you open a nested sub-page — say the Monthly Budget or Weekly To-do List inside the dashboard — and duplicate from there, you copy only that piece, not the full system. Always duplicate from the top-level template page to get the complete hub, navigation, and every linked database.
After you duplicate: making it yours
Once the copy is in the right workspace, treat it as a blank slate with good bones. Clear the sample rows from the Tasks & Projects and Financial Tracker databases, adjust the field options to match how you work — the Priority, Status, and Category fields are all editable — and reconnect the weather widget to your location. The Getting Started sub-page is just Notion’s default welcome boilerplate, so delete it or overwrite it with your own notes. From there the dashboard updates itself: add a task and it appears in Tasks Due Today; log an income entry and Monthly Revenue recalculates automatically.
