New Windows 11 file explorer can't drag and drop in address bar

Well, I did a comparison of the OS on both machines, and there are differences. The biggest one I can find is Windows Home versus Windows Enterprise. But it seems silly that such a feature would be limited in such a way. See the attached image.

To me it should be a no-brainer to enable drag and drop on all editions/versions of Windows 11 if it previously existed on all editions/versions of Windows 10. Am I wrong?

The edition of Windows (Home, Pro, Enterprise, etc.) makes no difference. The build revision is what matters in regards to Explorer features.

You're Enterprise version is old (build revision 2777). IIRC, build revision 3007 and higher have the new Explorer. Your old Enterprise build is running the older Windows 11 Explorer (i.e. the one that's less crippled).

As of build 3007 (or thereabouts) Microsoft updated Explorer to use their latest development tools. This makes things easier for them going forward and probably makes it easier to support the latest high dpi screens, provide better dark mode support, and other stuff that's mainly cosmetic. In doing so, they dropped some features that many users have come to depend on. Presumably the features would have been retained if it were easy to do so, but Microsoft says very little when they remove features, so we're left to speculate.

We can, and should, continue to complain about the removal of useful features and push for their return.

In the meantime, some users are working around the issue by uninstalling and blocking updates (not a great strategy IMO) or installing various patches that roll back to the older Windows 11 Explorer or the Windows 10 Explorer, as those code bases are still in the OS. Such patching is not for everyone (or can't be done in the case of managed company-owned computers). Patching usually works fine for home users (especially the more technically savvy), but there is always the potential for issues in the future.

I think Microsoft has the talent to give the current Explorer feature parity with the old version, but for whatever reason they don't seem to care about doing that. I'm not holding my breath. I'm still waiting for them to fix the feature "Also apply this template to all subfolders". That's been broken in Windows 11 since January 2022.

Makes me wish I knew how to revert to WIndows 10. I went kicking and screaming to Win11 as it is, and now I have even more reason to hate it.

Thanks for your input. I only updated my work machine (the one that works with drag/drop) to Win11 because the job required it. Otherwise I'd be happy with WIndows 10.

I also went kicking and screaming from WIndows 7 on another personal machine. Too many legacy hardware devices don't work with anything newer. I hate having to repurchase new hardware to replace devices that work fine except that Windows 8+ don't support them. On the whole Windows has been a disappointment since Win7 reached end of life.

I appreciate your feedback on this "little" Windows malady.

Makes me wish I knew how to revert to WIndows 10. I went kicking and screaming to Win11 as it is, and now I have even more reason to hate it.

Thanks for your input. I only updated my work machine (the one that works with drag/drop) to Win11 because the job required it. Otherwise I'd be happy with WIndows 10.

I also went kicking and screaming from WIndows 7 on another personal machine. Too many legacy hardware devices don't work with anything newer. I hate having to repurchase new hardware to replace devices that work fine except that Windows 8+ don't support them. On the whole Windows has been a disappointment since Win7 reached end of life.

I appreciate your feedback on this "little" WIndows malady.

I'm sticking with Windows 10 as my daily driver as long as security updates are free (currently Microsoft says until Oct 2025). I run Windows 11 only on VMs to test my software and to be able to answer questions about it.

You can certainly revert to Windows 10 (on personally owned machines) but it will require backing up your files, doing a clean install from USB drive, and then reinstall your applications and restore your data. It's your call on whether that's worth the trouble.

Since most of the Windows 11 deficiencies are to do with Explorer, you may be satisfied to switch Explorer to the Windows 10 version. You can use my free SwitchExplorer tool to do that. It doesn't install anything and will even work for a Standard (i.e. not administrator) user. It just sets a couple of user profile registry entries and restarts Explorer.

Wow!! Thank you so much. I'll give the SwitchExplorer tool a whirl. I really appreciate it. The changes to Windows 11 (the "strategy" of moving everything under submenus) is ridiculous. Give us a way to unclutter the context/right-click menus, but don't make multiple clicks necessary to do the most obvious actions. Grr!

:)

Thanks for letting me vent. I'll look forward to trying out the SwitchExplorer tool tomorrow!

Are there people from the dev team that monitor this? Any updates about adding back the feat of drag and drop. This is really a sad change that happened.

Have a great day.