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

I have 24H2, and my Navigation pane is looking as expected. It contains Documents, Home, and other quick access folders. If I expand "Home" I see Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, and other quick access folders.

In addition to "Show all folders" I also enabled "Expand to open folder"

My configuration:

File Explorer > ... > Options > View tab > Navigation pane >

Unchecked: Always show availability status

Checked: Expand to open folder

Checked: Show all folders

Unchecked: Show libraries

Unchecked: Show network

Checked: Show This PC

Show all folders in addition to Expand to open folder actually seems to work (ensuring that the open folder is always expanded in the left pane) on 23H2 (I have not had the courage to install 24H2 yet due to the flood of bugs; they tried to force-install it, so I force-stopped it).

It was an option I had tried before, but it didn't give the expected result until now. The interaction between these two settings is somewhat obscure, but that's par for the course with Microsoft. Microsoft makes simple things complicated.

Here, on 24H2, the quick access section (including my pinned items) disappears from the navigation pane when I enable "show all folders".

This solution is working for me on Windows 11 version 23H2:

In addition to enabling "Expand to open folder" I also enabled "Show all folders". With both options enabled, the folder tree expands when I navigate to it from Quick Access or any shortcut on the desktop or taskbar.

The problem was confusing because sometimes the folders expanded and sometimes they didn't. I found out what was happening, the folders expanded when I navigated to an external USB drive for example D:\ and E:\ drive, but not when I navigated to folders on C:\ drive. After I enabled the second option "Show all folders" the folders expanded on all drives including C:.

Try this:

In the Explorer address bar at the top of the window, append a BACKSLASH to the path.

When I change the path from "C:\Users\myname\OneDrive - mycompany_mycompany\Documents\How-Tos" to "C:\Users\myname\OneDrive - mycompany_mycompany\Documents\How-Tos****" then the Navigation pane suddenly starts syncing with the content window.

I tried this for several different folders, but absolutely nothing happened in Explorer.

The Expand to all folders option still doesn't work.

Try this:

In the Explorer address bar at the top of the window, append a BACKSLASH to the path.

When I change the path from "C:\Users\myname\OneDrive - mycompany_mycompany\Documents\How-Tos" to "C:\Users\myname\OneDrive - mycompany_mycompany\Documents\How-Tos****" then the Navigation pane suddenly starts syncing with the content window.