Hello,
I just noticed Win Explorer does not refresh the right pane as I navigate up/down a list of folders via arrow keys in the left pane. It used to make rapid visual read of folder contents possible. Can that feature be switched back on?
I've seen this reported elsewhere few years ago but I cannot find it on this site.
Hello Nick,
Do you mean to have the navigation pane automatically expand to the current folder?
Navigation Pane - Automatically expand to current folder
Brink, thanks for your swift response.
For some reason I can't make that solution work. Bear in mind the function I am after is what I thought was a Win XP thing. It may be ancient history now, if it existed at all -- the mind plays tricks. I just migrated to Win 7 64 (after a bad virus chewed my OS late last year ;\
So I have no Win XP box to reassure myself with. Still, I may be wrong but I believe the right pane always showed the content of the highlighted folder in the left pane regardless of how focus got there, mouse click, arrow key, meteor strike. I really liked the arrow key because of the ultra-low motor-coord demand in moving up and down (!). I was rarely able to arrange a meteor.
I followed your instructions and even then the right pane will only reveal the left pane folder if I mouse into that folder and click. (I'm averse to that if a keyboard action will suffice!) I also did not see any logical effect via Ctrl-Shift-E: the displayed files or folders bore no relation to the left-pane folder high-lighted. (I do see I can right click a left-pane folder with the +sign to expand its content in the left pane. That is familiar to me.)
As I said, maybe I misremembered the other Win XP function. I will know for sure after I cruelly and for sentimental reasons repair the XP laptop.
Hmm, ok. Please go ahead and post a screenshot showing this to see if it may help some more.
Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums
Are you saying, that when you click on a folder in the left (navigation) pane, the contents of that folder don't appear in the right (main) pane?
If you use the keyboard to navigate in the left pane, the right pane will only show the contents of the highlighted folder if you use the Spacebar or Enter key.
Lechnerus, the Spacebar or Enter key functionality works. But I thought in Win XP it showed folder contents even just by using the arrow keys to highlight in the left pane, with no need of any extra key stroke.
But if necessary I can get used to the extra keystroke I guess.
Brink, here are some screen shots:
01 shows the option selected;
02 shows after I click on "Local Drive D"
03 shows previous main display unchanged after I navigate by keyboard all the way to a far flung instance of "My Pictures" somewhere on Drive E I believe.
That's quite counter-intuitive.
Nick,
Yep, it's has Peter posted. Only if you click on the folder in the navigation pane will it instantly show it's contents.
Okay, I'll stop looking for Win XP behaviour where it can't be found.
Thanks to you both for checking this out with me.
If you don't like the way Windows Explorer works you could try a different file manager. :)
There are quite a few free file managers for Windows.
I use FreeCommander 2009.02b when I want to anything other than basic file management.
You could also look through the programs on this site:
File & Disk Management Downloads - Filepuma.com
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