How to re-enable the "Expand to Open Folder" option?

I can say this works in the narrow context as it was described, IF you remember to click on the shortcut BUT I am not sure this is going to work in cases where no Explorer windows/tabs are opened and you click upon something which results in Explorer loading, such as the downloads icon in most browsers which will open an instance of Explorer at the specific path where that browser is configured as its default downloads path.

So, this is more of a partial workaround rather than a complete fix. I am running Windows 11 Enterprise 23H2 for work and also have Dropbox, iCloud, and OneDrive adding their extensions onto the directory trees, as well as WSL2 running an Ubuntu 22.04 image. While I get that there are a lot more moving parts I have loaded which the file system has to deal with to mount these various services at certain virtual paths along the tree, this "Expand to Open Folder" is basic Explorer functionality which I believe has worked since Windows95, if not Windows for Workgroups 3.11, which is how long I have been running some flavor of Windows (>30 years), desktop and Server.

Any explanation that this is intended behavior, or even a deprecation of how this feature has formerly worked, is not going to be met with anything other than contempt as the options are very clearly in the same place they have been for decades and they just no longer work as intended without going through one of the community-offered workarounds, of those which actually even work for any other than the one who posted those (appreciated as these contributions are, they are not universally applicable). I suppose the next logical step I could take would be to replace all instances in settings which result in Explorer launching instead with my new shortcut to Explorer with the %userprofile% argument which I created on my desktop, although I am NOT doing that as it seems like an even greater opportunity for me to break so much more functionality that I don't as readily understand.

On desktop, right clik, New, Shortcut. Copy this:

C:\Windows\explorer.exe %USERPROFILE%

on the prompt (you can change %USERPROFILE% with any path you prefer, like C:\Users\Giovanni)

the next screen asks for a name of the shortcut. End.

Then you can just drag this new shortcut to the taskbar.

Please note that if you create a shortcut in the standard way (in Explorer, right click on the folder you want to link, Other options, Create shortcut) it does not work

not working as expected for me

I am quite puzzled because on my pc this solution (copied on KernHardmann and Tjaart Venter posts above) work different from "expand all folders".

if I select the last option, when I open the standard icon of Explorer, on the left panel all the directories expand (at first level) and if I double click one of them the "expand to open folder" works correctly. But I agree that is a mess because you have too much directories opened on left panel. (in short, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc all expanded)

If I create the shortcut, when I open Explorer using it the left panel is the standard one (with all the directories closed) and in the right panel I have the target directory chosen. I double click on one of the subdirectories in it and automatically in the left panel only the target directory expand up to the current position starting from My PC, and all the other directories remain collapsed (in short, only the directory C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Work)

Yes. A fix by Microsoft would be good so that this feature truly works as it once did.

vt9, you are very correct !

That is why I noticed the solution forwarded by Giovanni O, is not what we are looking for...

Let's hope one day someone will find good solution that works, or even better: a repair by Microsoft (update).