Windows Explorer expands folders inappropriately, jumping the folder you expand to the bottom of the navigation pane

Anonymous

When using a left-side Navigation pane, if there are enough folders in the navigation pane such that you have a vertical scroll bar, if you click on a folder with the mouse (so as to see the contends in the right pane), then expand the folder (either by clicking on the + symbol or with the arrow key), then the left pane will automatically scroll up as far as it can such that the folder you expanded is still in view at the bottom of the pane. This removes the folder from under your mouse, where it would be expected to stay.

This is certainly a bug, as it only happens the first time you attempt to expand a folder in the manner. After doing it once, you can scroll the navigation (left) pane so that the folder in question is back in the middle of the pane, and it will expand and contract as expected, remaining under the mouse.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

Because many people seem to be interested in this issue, I'll post some info on my recent contact with Microsoft regarding this issue.

It seemed that everywhere this issue was talked about, all anybody would get from a Microsoft employee was a boilerplate "Thanks for your feedback" response. Never was the validity of the issue discussed or even acknowledged. I decided to write an email to the man in charge, Steve Ballmer, clearly laying out the problem with links to a walkthrough of the problem, this discussion, and the bug report with 220 votes (at the time). I realized that Steve would never read it himself, but I figured his email must get auto-forwarded to someone who might actually read it.

Two days later I got an email from an Advocacy Specialist from Microsoft saying a "grace case" has been created and the Windows Escalation Team would get in touch with me. The next day an Escalation Engineer emailed me asking when would be a good time to talk on the phone about the issues. So that he would be completely clear with what I was talking about, I recorded a screencast that walked through precisely what the issue was.

Edit: I've made a more condensed video demonstrating the "folder jump bug", view it here.

The end result of our talking was this:

The engineers are aware of this issue.
They may or may not provide a fix for it.

Nothing groundbreaking, but it's one more little push in the right direction. In my opinion, posting in this thread about the problem is virtually worthless. I would suggest:

Voting up and commenting on the bug here:

http://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServerFeedback/feedback/details/621426/bug-when-expanding-folders-in-explorer-server-2008-r2-and-windows-7

He said that site is closely monitored by the dev team.

Writing intelligent, profanity-free complaints that mention how the bug negatively affects your everyday file-management workflow. Email these up the Microsoft food chain until you get a response. You are a paying customer and you deserve to be heard.

I got tired of dealing with it, so am now using XYplorer when doing heavy file management. It stings to have to pay for a decent file manager, but that is life. If this issue bothers you at all, please comment and vote on the bug, and write an email.

UPDATE 9/13/11: Bug is still present in Windows 8 Developer Preview, see it here.

UPDATE 1/30/12: Finally we have a public acknowledgment that this is in fact a bug that needs to be addressed, and it will apparently be fixed in the upcoming Windows 8 Beta. This is good news, but I know I will be using Win7 for at least another year or two, as will many, many others. We deserve a patch to fix this issue in Win7. Until that happens, keep bugging Microsoft about it.

FINAL THOUGHTS: This is a real bug with 645! votes on their feedback page, however MS has no plans to fix it for their Windows 7 users. The bug is fixed in Windows 8, which means nothing for a vast number of us who have no plans to upgrade. If this bug really gets under your skin, I suggest installing Classic Shell, which has been recommended a few times in this thread. You can choose to only install the 'Classic Explorer' feature which fixes this bug among others, and even brings back the old File Copy UI which is so nice to have back. I've been using it for many months now without any troubles.

Also, to those of you who think they find a solution to this problem by simply changing a few options settings somewhere... thank you for your desire to help all of us, but you must not be having the same problem, and please don't post your 'solution' here. If you read some of the 29 pages of this thread, you'll see every solution imaginable has been suggested. This is a bug in Explorer itself. If you use Windows 7 and plan to keep using it, your options are 1) use Classic Shell, or 2) use a third party file management tool, such as XYplorer. If you stumble across this thread because you just noticed this bug, please vote up the bug, and do either 1 or 2.

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Anonymous

2016-08-05T16:24:05+00:00

"Another undesirable consequence of this bug is that I've accidentally drag+dropped folders while trying to select a folder..."

If this happens, use Edit->Undo Move to restore the folder. Or in Windows 10, go to the Customize Quick Action Toolbar dropdown menu (the bar-and-arrow in the upper left of the title bar) and click Undo. This will add Undo to the toolbar so that you can click it when things go awry.
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Anonymous

2016-08-05T16:12:21+00:00

The funny thing is, they [Microsoft] "claimed" this was fixed in Win8 beta back in 2012.

Here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/01/30/acting-on-file-management-feedback/

Quote:

Explorer: navigation pane scrolling issue

xpclient said

Please fix the infamous Windows 7 navigation pane scrolling bug.

(See this Microsoft Answers thread for more information.)

We fixed it! As of the beta, it’s gone.

Another undesirable consequence of this bug is that I've accidentally drag+dropped folders while trying to select a folder at the exact time explorer decides to scroll to the top selected folder. A lot of times when this happens you have to hunt for which folder you accidentally moved.

I have project directories with hundreds of sub folders (thousands of folders total) and when searching for a folder, this is a real issue. I don't know if Microsoft still monitors this thread? Maybe someone needs to try getting it to the right people?
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Anonymous

2016-08-05T15:54:36+00:00

I've been having this problem many times a day for many years. It's a deep frustration for me. I've posted to complain about it before but nothing has been done. This needs to be escalated and solved. What needs to be done to accomplish this?

I am working. I generate and email several documents of different types every day. When I save those documents, I have this problem. When I attach those documents to my email I have this problem again. I could estimate it occurs on average twenty times a day.

These documents are saved on network server in various folders for different types of documents. Open/Save dialog always opens to the last folder used which is almost never the correct folder for the next document in the project. I'm sure being on the network has something to do with the delay. Just when I am about to select the folder, the folder pane suddenly moves. Almost always at the exact moment when I'm about to click, resulting in opening the wrong folder.

The delay seems to be about five to seven seconds, just enough time for me to scroll to me desired folder and click on it. Why should I form a habit to not choose my destination because of a bug?

Back in Windows XP days, this bug didn't exist, but an optional feature was introduced to expand the currently selected folder I believe in Windows 7. That should not have been optional, so it eventually became a permanent setting, so someone changed the code but neglected to acknowledge this bug in doing so.

The way I see it this problem is very, very easy to solve. The fact that it's so easy yet was skipped over bewilders me and aggravates me.

When the code selects and expands the current folder, just don't auto scroll to it. Simple. So, the current folder may not be shown on the screen, it is expanded and selected as we desire. The whole problem that exists here is that the currently expanded folder is NOT the folder that I want to access which is why I scrolled in the first place, but the bug causes the pane to scroll automatically (on a severe delay) to the OLD folder which is NOT desired.

Just disable the auto-scroll, please.
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Anonymous

2016-07-22T20:45:19+00:00

I agree with greencoder09's 20160721 post and in addition, often in the corporate environment users do not have admin rights to install anything especially those not sanctioned by the company (much less MS).
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