Windows 7 is often recognized as a polished version of Vista or what Vista should have been in a not so polite description. With Windows, polish can be applied in various areas of the system. The nuts and bolts, or under the hood, can lead to performance and stability gains but it’s otherwise hidden from the user. Spit and polish can also extend to the user interface and work flow, which is logically rather apparent to the consumer.

Lately most of Microsoft’s interface tweaks center around ease of use or simplification and efficiency. Windows Explorer has received a rather consistent evolution with every iteration of Windows. However, in 7 they might have gone too far with simplification and sacrificed some efficiency in the process.  Here’s what I mean.

Everyone is familiar with the two-panel approach in Windows Explorer: on the left is your folder structure organized in a tree-like layout; on the right is a reflection of your current folder – or where you are working at the moment. Conversely, there was a relationship between the left panel and the right panel. The navigation tree in the left would expand and reflect the hierarchical location of your current working folder in the right panel. Microsoft decoupled this relationship and in the process, made folder navigation simpler but not at all efficient. You must leverage the back button for example to navigate to a previous folder.

What do I mean? Here you can see I’m currently working inside the folder c:\Music\Music but the left hand panel remains fixed on Local Disk.

If you wish to have Explorer automatically expand to the current folder like previous versions that’s a pretty simple change if you know where to look.

Click Organize -> Folder and search options. Under the Navigation pane header on the General tab check off both Show all folders and Automatically expand to current folder.

Returning to Explorer you will notice the change immediately.