I’ve been working on a complex project in Notion for almost 3 years now. What started as a simple way to track my favorite sports team turned into this huge system that covers 111 years of game history, player stats, stadium info, and more.
My setup uses multiple connected databases. I have separate databases for players, competitive matches, practice sessions, and other stuff. Everything is linked together with tons of formulas that calculate things like player assists in different leagues, coach win rates against specific teams, and lots of other metrics.
Last week I hit a wall. Notion keeps showing me “You’ve reached the property data limit” whenever I try to add anything new. Can’t add new options to dropdown menus in the player database. Can’t add weather conditions to the match database. Nothing works.
The really annoying part is I can’t see how far over the limit I am or what impact deleting things would have. I already removed 35 formula and dropdown properties from my matches database but I’m still over the limit. Breaking formulas when I delete properties is also a nightmare since everything is connected.
This is super frustrating because I picked Notion specifically because it seemed unlimited. Has anyone dealt with this before? Any tips on what takes up more space - dropdown properties or formulas? Is there a way to see exactly how much I need to cut?
Property limits hit me the same way when my project management system exploded past what I thought it could handle. Here’s what worked for me: I duplicated my biggest database and started systematically deleting different property types to see what actually made a difference. Those dropdown properties with tons of unique values? They eat way more space than you’d think, especially when they’re spread across multiple databases. Your weather conditions and player stats dropdowns are probably killing you. Don’t guess - export your data and rebuild just the essentials in a test workspace. You’ll see exactly what you actually need. Sometimes starting over with only the critical connections shows you how much junk builds up after three years of just adding stuff as you go.
Three years of data growth will break any system. I hit this same wall with a genealogy project that spiraled way past what I planned. The property limit impacts your entire workspace, making troubleshooting a nightmare. Avoid randomly deleting properties; instead, track which formulas are actually used versus those that seem important but add zero value. Formulas with multiple rollups consume significantly more resources than simple dropdowns. Your coach win rates and cross-league calculations likely take up a lot of space. Consider whether you truly need all those metrics calculated in real-time—simplifying some to basic text fields and updating them manually for key records might help. Additionally, separate your historical data from active data: maintain a fully loaded current season while stripping older years down to essentials. This way, you can rebuild specific historical analyses as needed rather than keeping everything at once.
Been there with massive databases hitting walls. Brutal truth? Notion’s property limits make it awful for large scale data projects like yours.
I had the same nightmare with a customer analytics system. Spent weeks trying to optimize within Notion’s limits - deleting properties, archiving data. Nothing worked long term.
What saved me was moving the heavy lifting outside Notion entirely. Built automated workflows that handle complex calculations and data processing externally, then push clean summary data back to Notion for viewing.
For your sports system, automate the stat calculations, player performance metrics, and historical analysis outside Notion. Keep Notion as your dashboard but let automation handle the data crunching. No more formula limits or property headaches.
Your 111 years of game history would process way faster too. Instead of Notion struggling with thousands of connected records and formulas, you get instant updates pushed in clean.
I use this approach for all my big data projects now. Notion stays clean and fast, automation does the work.
damn that sucks. workspace limits are honestly the worst thing about notion. check for old test databases - even empty ones count toward your limit. for those 111 years of records, maybe split them by decades into separate workspaces? not perfect but better than losing everything
I’ve encountered a similar challenge with Notion. It’s important to note that the property limit applies across your entire workspace, which means that focusing solely on one database won’t yield the results you want. I addressed this by simplifying my dropdown options and merging duplicate entries, which freed up space. Additionally, consider creating an archive for older records; this allows you to maintain links without cluttering your current setup. While Notion doesn’t specify where limits are reached, reducing dropdown entries can significantly help.
Oof, that’s rough! Same thing happened to my recipe database last year. Relation properties use way more space than you’d expect - especially with tons of connections like yours. Try consolidating some linked databases if you can, maybe merge practice sessions with matches? Also check for any unused relations from old experiments.