File Explorer keeps going to Desktop

It seems like if you turn off "Show all folders" in the Windows Explorer options, then this problem goes away. I've been tormented with this for a while. I have shortcuts on my desktop to specific folders and when I double click them, instead of going to the folder, it goes to desktop. I click back and I'm at the folder. This is annoying and isn't how shortcuts are supposed to work. Turning off "Show all folders" seems to have fixed it. What a joke that Microsoft can't get their act together. They are so worried about making everything cloud-based and finding a way to get people to subscribe to M365 and OneDrive that they have completely broken a once useful tool.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Your description is exactly what I encounter. I am also a developer, not a photographer. I usually have over a dozen applications open on three monitors, and multiple windows of File Explorer. I noticed File Explorer was often showing Desktop and scratched my head for a while before I realized that I could use the back button to restore the original folders. It was happening in the background and I had no clue. I used photo folders as an example because I happened to notice one day that File Explorer went to Desktop while I was browsing photos.

Thank you for confirming this.

I feel it is getting worse. For example, I often have half a dozen tabs in File Explorer and move files between them. Many tabs (e.g., 4 or 5 out of half a dozen) frequently go to Desktop. This means that I have to click the back button for each of them to get things going. This is more than a minor nuisance now.

Hi, hipswich

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

We understand that you are only experiencing this issue when opening the Photos folder and our tests have not been able to reproduce the issue, so it is possible that this is a bug in File Explorer, you can submit this issue and your ideas and suggestions through the Feedback Hub, and the development team will regularly review submissions for ideas or fixes.  Please share the feedback link here after submitting as it will allow others on the forum to vote for your submission, including me. More votes will lead to more visibility and higher priority to the development team.

Sincerely

Nicholas | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

It is definitely a bug in File Explorer and how it refreshes the tabs. It's annoying. It could be linked to OneDrive syncing but I'm not sure. This exact same behaviour has been happening to me for a few weeks already and it has little to do with what you're doing (working on Word docs, viewing photos, opening/closing files etc.). It seems to happen randomly or triggered by something in the background. I didn't know it's possible to navigate back to the previous folder with the back button, this helps while we wait for Microsoft to fix it...

Thanks for your reply. Being in dev, I guess it pains you just as much as me to not know how this is being triggered. It's valuable to have more input, as that can help hone down on the why.

One notable exception to the pattern happened yesterday. I came back to my File Explorer to find all the tabs but one navigated to Desktop: the one I had a .zip file open in. That tab was showing the contents of the archived file, and didn't navigate away to Desktop. Strange.

Just as a curiosity, do you use git? I've had a sinking feeling that when I do a commit, checkout or other changes that dynamically alter the file system, that's when the bug is triggered. Can't prove this yet.

Also, is this the best channel to notify MS of a bug? I've been searching out this issue for days and hadn't seen any mention of it until your post.