When you click the folder in the navigation pane of the File Explorer window?

In Windows 10, the navigation pane on the left side of File Explorer shows a group of nodes, all at the same level: Quick Access, OneDrive and other connected cloud accounts, This PC, Network, and so on.

Nội dung chính Show

Make Explorer Navigation Pane expand to open folder
What is the navigation pane in File Explorer?
What happens when you click the expand icon next to a folder in the navigation pane?
What is the navigation pane and right pane used for in File Explorer?
What appears when you right click a file or folder icon?

But if you prefer to move through the file system using old-school hierarchical trees, you can configure the navigation pane to support that preference. Right-click any empty space in the navigation pane and click Show All Folders to see this option. (It's a toggle, so if you don't like the effect, just click Show All Folders again to remove the checkmark and restore the default navigation pane.)

With Show All Folders selected, the navigation pane displays only two nodes: Quick Access remains at the top; below it is a Desktop node that expands to show different locations using a tree-style view.

You can see the results in the screenshot here, where the default arrangement is on the left and All Folders view is on the right.

No matter which option you choose, Quick Access remains at the top, where you can pin shortcuts to the folders, drives, and cloud storage locations you use most frequently and see a list of recently access files and folders.

Right-click any folder icon to pin it to Quick Access, then drag pinned items up or down to your preferred order. Folders you've used recently appear at the bottom of the Frequent Folders list; to remove any of these automatically added items, right-click the icon and then click Remove from Quick Access.

When you click on the File Explorer icon in Windows 11/10, it displays a navigation folder on the left, and Quick Access details on the right. If you notice, the folders list in the navigation pane does not list all the folders inside it. It only expands when you click on the small arrow pointing to the left. In this post, we will share a tip which helps you make the Explorer navigation pane automatically expand to open the folder in Windows 11/10.

We are talking about automatically expanding the folder in the left navigation pane when you click on Windows 10 File Explorer. There are three ways to do it:

Use Navigation Folder or use the menu
Change folder & search options.
Change via Registry Settings.

Use these tips smartly. Some of them work temporarily, while some are a permanent solution. The registry hack should be used if you are configuring a computer remotely.

Just before we go ahead, let’s get to know a bit about each of these options:

Show libraries: Displays all the libraries.
Show all folders: It displays all the folders, including those which are on the desktop in the left-hand pane.
Expand to the current folder: It does two things on the left navigation panel
- Automatically display the root of the selected folder (in the right pane) along with a list of all the folders inside it.
- When you click on any of the folders listed on the left pane, it will automatically expand in Explorer navigation pane.

1] Use Navigation Folder or use the menu

Once you open the File Explorer, right click on an empty space on the left side, and you can choose between — Show libraries, Show all folders, and Expand to the current folder.

The second option is to use the File Explorer menu. When on File Explorer, switch to View tab available on the ribbon menu. Then click on the Navigation pane menu, you will have the same option as above. Choose Expand to the current folder.

2] Change folder & search options

In the File Explorer, click on the file menu and select Change folder & search options. It will open the Folder Options window. Switch to view section, and then scroll to the end. Here you will have the option to expand to open the folder, check it. Click, OK, and you are done.

Next time you click on any folder, the Navigation Pane will Expand the folder on the left pane.

3] Change via Registry Settings

Use Registry editor when you have to change options on a couple of computers remotely. If you are not well versed with editing Registry entries, do not use it.

Open the Start menu, and type Regedit.

It will display the Registry Editor listing. Click to open it.

Navigate to –

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

There are two settings which you can choose to change

NavPaneShowAllFolders relates to Show all folders option.

NavPaneExpandToCurrentFolder relates to Expand to the current folder option.

Change the value from 0 to 1 to enable it.

Click OK and exit to see the changes.

Too many expanded folders can be overwhelming. So unless you have a task which requires viewing all the folders, keep this off.

The navigation pane lists the folders and drives on your computer, and network locations such as your OneDrive. By default, the first item in the navigation pane is your Quick access view, listing your Frequent folders and Recent files.

When you click the expand icon next to a folder in the navigation pane it shows the hierarchy of folders on the drive. This way the user can use it to find and manage files and folders.

The Navigation pane provides links to commonly used drives and folders to reduce the number of clicks or taps it takes to locate a file or folder. File Explorer provides a default list of favorites, libraries, homegroups, and networks in the Navigation pane.