Today’s Question: Recently I checked and found out that the option to “Show Items from Subfolders” from the View menu in Adobe Bridge was disabled and greyed out. I have been searching around on the web did not find any clue how to enable this option or why it was disabled.
Tim’s Quick Answer: I suspect in this case you are viewing search results in Adobe Bridge rather than browsing directly within a folder. When you use the search feature in Adobe Bridge, there is a separate setting for whether or not to include results from subfolders, and therefore the item on the View menu is disabled when you’re viewing search results.
More Detail: When you perform a search in Adobe Bridge, the results are displayed and at the top of the Content panel you will see a summary of the search criteria. That criteria would include, for example, whether or not Adobe Bridge is showing results from subfolders or only from the current folder.
You can change the search criteria by clicking the New Search button at the top-right of the Content panel. This will bring up a dialog, which includes a variety of controls to enable you to refine your search. One of those is a checkbox for “Include All Subfolders”.
Because there is a separate control related to subfolders when using the search feature in Adobe Bridge, the “Show Items from Subfolders” command on the View menu is disabled when you have active search results displayed within Adobe Bridge.
Note that you can click the “X” button at the top-right of the Content panel (or in the search field) to clear the search result and continue browsing individual folders directly. At that point the “Show Items from Subfolders” command would be enabled again on the View menu.