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.

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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

2014-10-20T14:15:52+00:00

GOOD news! FINALLY! I tried Windows 10 Technical Preview. Could not reproduce the issue after trying for 20 min.

Also, APPS are not full screen anymore. They can be resized. Metro doesn't load first anymore. Sp far it's looking like Windows 10 is a fixup of the past few OS's.

In all my testing of Windows 10. So far... I only have good things to say! Which is a nice change!

I'm hoping that by the time it's released MS doesn't throw a pebble into my shoe (so to speak). :)

I want ONE OS that I have nothing to complain about. No glaring bugs. No major glaring issues. No copy bugs. No scrolling bugs.

PLEASE!!! LOL. So far so good! I'm so far a happy guy! Even though I hate the charms I may still buy Windows 10 depending on how it is on customer machines.

To this day I have never sold a single copy of Windows 8 or 8.1 unless it was through a laptop which is kinda crammed down your throat. Maybe I can finally start selling Windows 10 when it's done!

We will see...
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Anonymous

2014-09-28T16:08:41+00:00

All I know is I only use file manager, I never use all those "MyMusic" my my my stupid things get in the way.

Then in order to get to an actual drive you have to make a shortcut, otherwise we have that stupid USER **** all lined up above the drive.

Then add this to all that confusion, it's like the more they dumb things down for the masses, the worse it gets.

Then they do all this game saving on a separate drive, while I don't want ANY default directory. I want ALL my related files to stay on the same drive as the game, nope can't have that either.

Then we have all this "permission" ****, I know what I am deleting, I am NOT an administrator, a "user" I bought the dang system, and furious that we can't eliminate that and just turn on a dang computer.

I have to go through far more clicks and scrolls than I ever had to before, win 2000 pro, but am forced to have win7 because of hardware.
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Anonymous

2014-09-27T19:09:52+00:00

What boggles my mind is... does anyone at Microsoft even use Windows? All those thousands of employees, managers, Bill and Steve themselves... have non of them ever bothered to poke around in Explorer and look for files and said... "Hey... what the heck is this? This is BAD! I better get on this right away and get some team somewhere and fix this!"

I have a feeling most people only click on files and folders on the RIGHT side thus avoiding this bug. I myself LOVE having folders on the LEFT and files on the RIGHT. By opening folders on the LEFT side of Explorer is what triggers the error.

What's funny... while I do like XP... it did NOT copy files very quickly across the network compared to Windows 7. Win 7 screams compared to Win XP when it's a 7 to 7 machine across a gigabit network.

I do LOVE the interface of Windows Vista but I hated it's slowness and weird network copy bugs where it took MS over 2 years to fix the copy bug where it would never actually start the copy...

The Vista interface is very close to XP's in functionality just more stylish.

... and as I have said many times before... I don't mind innovation (Win 8 style, Metro etc)... but give us a CHOICE as which interface we use!

"Thank you for installing Windows 9. Please CHOOSE from the following interfaces...

Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1 without metro, and please try our Win 8/8.1 with Metro!

And on tablets... have a Metro only option...
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