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

2013-04-17T14:50:17+00:00

Thanks for your report - very interesting. If you can do some other tests, eg. remove the file, I'd be very interested to here the results.
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Anonymous

2013-04-17T14:29:01+00:00

I have a multiple monitor setup at work, using three monitors at this time. I do this with a Dell Optiplex that has a 4 channel video card. My main computer is a Dell Lattitude laptop. When at work, I remote in to my laptop from my Optiplex to use the multiple monitors. To use multiple monitors with RDC, you have to use Windows 7 Ultimate. I have Win7 Ultimate on both computers. Now, yesterday morning I copied the file Explorer.exe.mui from a co-worker that has Windows 7 Pro and was not having the issue with the left navigation pane jumping around. I simply placed it in a miscellaneous folder on my laptop while I was connected through my Optiplex remotely. The issue went away on my laptop. I tested my Optiplex and was not having the issue on it either. Now, I don't use my Optiplex drives for most of my work so I can't be 100% sure I was having the issue on it but I think I was. I hav enot copied the file to my Optiplex yet. The bottom line is that I have not had the issue now on either computer since I copied the file to my laptop. I have no idea what this might have done and I am waiting for the issue to come back but it has not yet. Very nice so far not having to deal with it. I just went through and clicked on every folder that has a subfolder and it acts as it should and stays right there. If it is at the bottom of the screen and I expand, it just moves up enough to show me the subfolders. If there are enough subfolders to fill the navigation pane, the main folder goes to the top and shows all of the subfolders underneath. One aggravation now gone (for now anyway). I'll let you know if it breaks again. I guess I could remove the file and see what happens. I might do that.
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Anonymous

2013-04-17T12:54:57+00:00

I wish they would get this through their heads, I need to see the plus signs ALL THE TIME, not that silly mouse over junk.

The disappearing triangles is a function of the Aero theme. Right click on your desktop, select Personalization, and switch to either Windows 7 Basic (for triangles) or Windows Classic (for plus signs in an XP look) in the Basic and High Contrast Themes section. The triangles and plus signs won't disappear.

Switching to a basic theme makes some programs like Java work better because Windows doesn't have to switch back and forth between themes (Java can be incompatible with Aero if graphics are involved; Minecraft is an example). You probably don't care about seeing through title bars anyway. I sure don't since it's really confusing to me sometimes.

To bad this won't fix the scrolling problem. Ah, well...
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Anonymous

2013-04-17T06:40:37+00:00

Please let us know what happened after re-booting.
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