Windows 11 Explorer: can't order quick access items in the left pane

Brass Contributor

I can't reorder the quick access items in the right pane of the windows explorer through drag and drop. It's weird, because if i drag and drop one of them to the top, it works, but if i want to place an item in the middle of the list it doesn't work.

 

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41 Replies

@juliangzr Yes, this is very frustrating. The whole point of having a Quick Access folder list is to make folders easy to find but if you can't sort them you end up spending seconds scanning down an ever-growing list of randomly named folders.

 

I just upgraded to Windows 11 and it was the first thing I checked to see if it had been fixed. No joy there.

I don't understand how something this simple isn't obvious to them.
Please, Microsoft, bring back Quick Access sorting

so bad microsofot, simple but not work.. break everything, before if it worked!!!!!!

 

I've the 22h2 but this worked on 22h1 so bad microsofot

@juliangzr 

It worked even in windows 11 for me until last week and i used it intensively. Now it does not work more. I think it's a bug related with some update.

Does not even allow me to move things to the top. It is the one feature that I relied on, I am very disappointed.

@njerisanyu  I completely agree, this would be worth some developers time! The 

Me too - it's been like this since the first time we got 'tabs' - when I ran that update, this same behaviour started happening for me. I can still add things into Quick Access, but I can't move them order about.

I tried MS support and did some OS install fix, but when I upgraded windows the same issue happened, which suggest that it's an OS bug

@juliangzr 
So the weirdest hack worked, I was messing around with folder options and found that if I don't select "show all folders" (https://drive.google.com/file/d/167z2YtaFqf6xMHnCbYCDy4qwlOQQaaH5/view?usp=share_link) the view looks very wonky but at least you can reorder your quick access items. 

 

@njerisanyu

Nice, simple get-around until someone catches up with their work at MS.  Need to mention that the manual sort stays sorted if you reset to 'Show all folders' after manually sorting, fortunately. 

This ^ works for me! Thanks :)

@njerisanyu  Thanks!  Great tip!  This worked for me, after many frustrating attempts to re-order quick access items!

Did not work for me :(

I tried your set of checked boxes from the screenshot, no change, unticked all options, no change.

I am on Windows 11 22H2 22623 (Insider beta channel). Maybe your tweak to sort quick links is gone in that version?

When I move a quick access folder, it will only show me copy or move operations (dependant on pressing ctrl or shift while dragging), not reorder.

Microsoft, come on, let us organize/sort our quick access folders.

@Sven Carstensen 

This hack did re-order the folders in my navigation pane.  It placed the quick access folders below my One Drive Folders, and created a line separating the two.  This was a little annoying, but I have adjusted, and it is worth the visual change in order to be able to reorder the quick access folders.  

@skkmom3 Thank you for that part that I was missing. I never looked down that far in the navigation list. I tried to sort the folders shown under "Start" at the top of the navigation. Scrolling further down, I found the quick links and could sort them. Thank you! You made my day :)
Thanks for letting me know this worked for you. After re-sorting my quick access folders, I went back to folder options, and re-selected "show all folders," which moved them back to the top of the navigation pane, where I prefer. Now that I know the "trick," I can re-sort again if needed.