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Turn off auto-expanding trees in Windows Explorer

Posted August 2002 by Steve Sinchak

I'm sure some of you have noticed that in Windows Explorer, whenever you click a folder in the left pane, it automatically expands to show all subfolders. If you find this annoying, follow these steps...

  1. close Windows Explorer if it's running

  2. go Start -> Run, then type "regedit"

  3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

  4. Change the value of "FriendlyTree" to 0

  5. close regedit, and start up Windows Explorer. Auto-expanding menus are now off

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