Can we stop Explorer from jumping when expanding a directory?

[Djard]

Whe I expand a directory in Explorer the window automatically jumps, so that the directory I expanded appears at the bottom of the screen and all its subfolders are then out of view. Is there a way to stop this annoying behavior in Win 7 and have the directory stay fixed when expanded, like it did in Win XP?

 

[Trucidation]

I'm not sure if you can do that in vanilla Win7, but there are options to modify various Explorer behaviour in the Classic Shell free software:

Welcome to Classic Shell

 

[carwiz]

I'm not quite sure what you mean but see if Folder Options > General tab > Navigation shows what you want. Un-check both boxes.

 

[Djard]

That seems to have done the trick. Thanks.

 

[carwiz]

You're welcome. And thank you for reporting back.

 

[Djard]

File expansion annoyance in Win Explorer

I don't know if installation of the last (seemingly endless) Windows' updates causes the problem, but it's back. The steps I used before that seeemed to remedy the problem now fail. I see on the Internet that other folks are experiencing the same problem. I just wonder what the engineers at Microsoft find so desirable about having a directory jump out of sight when it is expanded. Maybe they just want to annoy us with sadistic behavior.

 

[carwiz]

Do you sign-on with the same user name? Did you delete any *.INI files? Install new software?

I've had mine set as above since installing W7 on this machine over a year ago. Never a problem and I stay up-to-date so it's not the updates doing it.

 

[Djard]

Well, you are correct. Not all PCs manifest this problem. I have five computers in my office and three at home. No question that Windows updates can destabilize a PC as all the advanced users in the circles in which I travel will attest (some programmers and website developers); besides, Microsoft has in the past released patches to fix updates.

No unstable people in my environment, so I don't have to login with a username and password. And I have not deleted or edited any ini files. Installing an app should not affect my file manager. Proof of the latter is evidenced by the fact that FreeCommander, a third party file manager, has remained free from the problem I describe. If someone developed a file manager with the ability to view a folder's contents in a separate pane, like Win Explorer does, I would not use Win Explorer at all. It looks like I will need to live with the problem and hope the engineering design in the next version of Windows will be more logical.

 

[Ivo]

Make sure you are reproducing the problem correctly.
1) Open a new Explorer window
2) Expand a few folders with the mouse until the scrollbar appears
3) Scroll down a bit (to allow the bug to manifest)
4) Select a folder without expanding it
5) Expand it

You will see that the tree will scroll up. Basically the bug shows up when you expand a folder for the first time and the folder is already selected.

I know of two solutions to the problem. a) Classic Shell, b) upgrade to Win8 (the bug is fixed there)

 

[Djard]

Thanks. I'll wait for Win 8 to be released.

 

[hello2011]

I've tried all the "solutions" offered on the Net. So far, only this one works for me. Install Classic Shell. Go to Classic Explorer Settings. Under Navigation Pane, choose Windows Vista. The "+" in the Navigation Pane should turn to small triangle. No more auto-expanding folder trees.

 

[UXGaurav]

Classic Shell also has another fix called "Fix folder scrolling" for Windows 7 Explorer's incorrect scrolling/jumping down of the Windows Explorer Navigation Pane. The bug was fixed by Microsoft in Windows 8/8.1.