Expand may refer to any of the following:

  1. The process or opening a folder and displaying all its contents. For example, with Microsoft Windows, in Explorer, a user may click the plus ( + ) symbol next to a folder or double-click it to expand and view its contents. If you wanted to hide its contents, click the minus ( - ) to collapse the folder.

  2. The process of taking a compressed file and extracting all the files. This restores the files to the original format.

Collapse, Compress, Explode, Extract, Software terms

  • Windows users, see our expand Windows command reference.
  • Linux users, see our expand Linux command reference.