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

I am 50 year old, am computer science engineer and have 25 year experience in managing worldwide IT projects: I'm not surprised that Microsoft doesn't care at all 😁

Reading the www for hours :

• Update 22H2 is the culprit. Some systems are affected, some are not.
• Only folders behind C:\Users\USERNAME\ are affected.
• I did launch all possible "solutions" (sfc scan, repair windows image, etc...) but that did not help.
• Work-arounds are available (3rd party file manager, option "show all folders", playing with libraries/shortcuts, whatever....) Unfortunately, these do not make life easier !

Ctrl+Shift+E will temporarily restore your left tree, but this tree is not "updated" when moving folders in the right pane - pretty useless to me.

VERY ANNOYING !!!!

Hope someone will find a decent solution....

Bright spot : there are A LOT of people having this same problem.

Yes, it appears that many people are having this issue, as am I. This problem exists on all 4 of my Windows 11 machine, and it also happens if I download a new Windows 11 ISO and run an instance in a Virtual Machine. This is definitely an issue that Microsoft caused as they added/corrected some other function of the Windows Explorer.

I've discovered a workaround. If you ALSO enable the "Show all folders" checkbox in Folder Options, it'll make "Expand to Open Folder" actually work.

Of course, this floods your Navigation pane with a dozen worthless folders that I don't know how to hide, but until (unless...) this bug is fixed, it's a price of annoyance that I'm willing to pay.

Just tried that and it does work ... as a work-around. So, this also again proves that Microsoft broke something in an update.