I’ve been using Notion to organize my cooking recipes, and I’m having trouble with keeping a specific arrangement. I created a database for all my recipes and manually arranged them by dragging items until I got the perfect order. The issue is that this custom arrangement doesn’t seem to stick when I switch between different views or reload the page. I know I could create a new property field and assign numbers to each recipe for sorting, but I’m trying to keep my database clean without adding unnecessary columns. Is there a way to make Notion remember my manual drag-and-drop ordering? I want to save it as a permanent view option and easily switch between this custom order and other sorting methods like alphabetical or by date added.
Notion’s manual ordering is broken, plain and simple. Hit the same wall organizing my book database - took weeks to crack it. Here’s what worked: skip the manual field entirely and build a formula that handles sort order using data you already have. For recipes, try combining creation date with cuisine type - maybe first letter of cuisine plus timestamp. You get ordering that actually sticks across views without extra clutter. Best part? The formula updates itself when you add recipes, so no babysitting number fields.
Yeah, you’ve hit one of Notion’s most annoying bugs. The drag-and-drop ordering never sticks - it’s just a temporary visual thing, not actual sorting. I found this out the hard way with my inventory database and lost hours of work after refreshing the page. The sorting property workaround everyone mentions is your only real fix. But here’s a tip: use a date field instead of numbers. You can quickly set rough dates that match your preferred order, plus it gives you useful info about when you usually make each recipe. Makes that extra column actually worth having instead of just being there for sorting.
Ugh, this drove me crazy too! Notion really needs to fix this. The only workaround I found was creating a rank prop with values like 001, 002, 003 so they sort properly. Just use leading zeros or 10 will come before 2. then hide that column but keep it for sorting.