Notion Status Property - Allow Empty Status With No Defaults¶

This is a little nugget for Notion users who would like to take advantage of the status property type but who don't want a default value for all records.

Why might you want to do this? Well, my requirement was for a timeline of events/procedures that have a status (not started, in progress, done etc.) and points in time for connecting other things which don't have a status themselves (a monitoring record for example).

If you have a similar requirement and are avoiding using the status property type because of it's default value, read on 😄

I'm not alone in wanting to be able to do this and I inadvertantly achieved the ability to do this without realising it.

The great news is, it's incredibly easy to achieve and, having spoken to Notion support about it, everything is functioning as designed so it's unlikely to cause an issue in the future. If it does, the option exists to revert back to the select property type. So how do you remove the default option from your status property type?

Simply convert it to a select property type and then when you've done that, convert it back to a status property type (and re-order if required).

Now none of the value options should be marked as default and if you click the status property field to edit it, the currently selected option should have an X icon on it signifying it can be deleted. When there is a default option, the ability to delete the current value is not available. Click the little X icon and the option is gone and the field is empty.

You should also notice that any page in the database that has not explicitly had a status set, will now have an empty status.

And so concludes this useful little nugget.