Project Notes Pro 6.1.0: A Faster Way to Find the Files That Belong to Your Projects

Project Notes Pro 6.1.0 is out, and the headline feature is one I have wanted to get right for a while: a native File Finder.

That may sound small at first. It is not.

Anyone who manages real projects knows the work rarely lives in one perfect place. Some files are on a local drive. Some are in Microsoft Teams. Some are in SharePoint. Some started in Teams but were synced locally. Some belong to one project but are buried inside a shared team folder with files for several other projects.

So the practical question becomes: when you open a project, can you get to the files that actually matter?

In Project Notes Pro 6.1.0, the answer gets a lot better.

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File Finder is now native

Earlier versions of Project Notes Pro had a File Finder plugin. It was useful, but it lived outside the core application. With 6.1.0, File Finder has been rebuilt as a native integration.

That matters for speed, reliability, and the way the feature fits into the normal project workflow.

The new File Finder is configured in Settings. Once set up, it can scan your local search locations and Microsoft Teams or SharePoint through the Microsoft Graph API. It then uses configurable matching rules to identify folders and documents that appear to belong to each project and adds them to that project's Files & Folders list.

The goal is simple: less hunting, less copying, less "where did we put that?" before a meeting.

For a project manager, that is a real workflow improvement. The app is already where project notes, action items, tracker items, people, risks, and decisions live. Now it can also help keep the related project files close at hand.

It searches across Teams projects too

One of the bigger improvements is that File Finder does not only look in one narrow folder.

If your organization uses Microsoft Teams, project files often end up spread across different Teams, channels, and synced folders. A project manager may be responsible for work that touches several of those spaces. The new File Finder can search Teams and SharePoint locations and compare what it finds against your project matching rules.

That means it can discover files and folders that relate to your projects even when they live outside the one folder you expected to check.

This is especially useful when a team uses Teams for some projects and local folders for others. The real world is mixed. Project Notes Pro should handle that instead of forcing every project into one storage pattern.

Local files take priority when they should

The new File Finder also handles a common annoyance: duplicate paths between cloud and local storage.

If the same project folder exists in Teams and is also synced locally, Project Notes Pro keeps the local path when that is the more useful option. That way, the Files & Folders list stays practical for desktop work and for other applications that know how to open local files but do not know anything about Teams links.

This is one of those details that sounds technical but feels very human in use.

When you are in the middle of a meeting, you do not want to think through whether a file should open through a browser, a synced folder, or a Teams location. You want to open the right thing and keep moving.

Office documents open in the real Office apps

Project Notes Pro 6.1.0 also improves what happens after you find a file.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Project files can now open in the native Office desktop apps when those apps are available. Project Notes Pro builds the Office app link at open time and falls back to the browser if the desktop app is not installed.

There is also a setting for this: "Open links in desktop apps when available." If you prefer Office Online, you can turn the native handoff off.

That gives the feature the right kind of flexibility. Some users live in the desktop Office apps. Others prefer the browser. Project Notes Pro now supports both paths without changing the stored canonical link used for export, sync, and mobile.

The release also tightens the desktop experience

File Finder is the largest addition, but 6.1.0 includes a lot of polish across the QML desktop app.

Settings have been reorganized into tabs, which makes the newer configuration options easier to find. Window size restoration is fixed. Dialog close buttons now have a real, shared hit target. The log viewer's right-click menus now match the app theme.

Search also gets important fixes. Tracker Update search results now open the correct item, and note search results open the note instead of only opening the project.

There are several smaller workflow improvements too:

• Items move from New to Assigned when someone is selected.
• Date pickers stay on-screen when a field sits near the edge of the window.
• Person pickers now support keyboard navigation.
• Date Updated and Date Resolved refresh live while editing an item.
• Combo box ordering, meeting action-item editing, autocomplete behavior, note editing, and project details all received fixes or polish.
• In-app Help now handles mkdocs-style links and mixed table/body content more reliably.

None of those are flashy on their own. Together, they make the 6.0 interface feel more settled.

Mobile and sync fixes are included too

The iOS companion app also picks up the Office document preference, including a native URL opener with a browser fallback through an in-app Safari view.

Cloud Sync has been tightened as well. It no longer starts when sync is enabled but credentials are missing, and it now shuts down an engine that was left running from a prior session when sync is turned off. Routine JSON Web Token (JWT) expirations are no longer shown as sync errors.

Those changes are about reducing noise. Sync should be dependable, and when something routine happens behind the scenes, it should not feel like the application is asking the user to diagnose it.

IFS plugin fixes

For users working with the IFS integration, 6.1.0 restores tracker item creation from Project Notes into IFS ActivityTasks, including projects where IFS currently has no tasks.

Activity task sync is fixed as well.

That is a narrow area of the application, but an important one for teams that rely on it. Integrations only matter if the day-to-day data keeps moving in the direction people expect.

Why this release matters

Version 6.0 was a major step: the new QML desktop interface became the default, bringing a modern desktop experience to the application.

Version 6.1.0 builds on that foundation by improving the work around the meeting.

Project management is not just notes. It is also the spreadsheet someone sent last month, the specification in Teams, the PowerPoint for the client review, the open tracker item, the decision from the last meeting, and the local folder you keep because it is faster when you are deep in the work.

Project Notes Pro is built for that mixed reality.

The native File Finder helps the application understand more of the project environment around it. It finds files from local folders and Teams or SharePoint, adds them to the project, keeps local paths useful when they exist, and makes Office documents open in the place you actually want to work on them.

That is the theme of this release: fewer interruptions between knowing what project you are working on and getting to the material you need.

You can download Project Notes Pro 6.1.0 from the GitHub release page.

Written by Paul McKinney, founder of Project Notes Pro. Try it free at projectnotespro.com.