Someone else was asking the same question the other day:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/319789
Are you running the latest version of WordPress?
Sure am! I’ve had this happen twice, in fact.
(I should say – on two different servers/installs)
I don’t know is the short answer, but you can try some basic troubleshooting and at least rule out some of the more obvious things:
Disable all your plugins.
Switch to your default theme.
Clear your cache.
Clear your cookies.
Try a different browser.
Delete the wp-admin and wp-includes folders, and re-upload them from a fresh copy of WordPress:
http://wordpress.org/download/
Hopefully if anyone has any bright ideas after you’ve confirmed none of those are the problem, they’ll chime in.
I just ballsed up my install entirely, so am reinstalling all but wp-config and my theme anyway, so we’ll see if that fixes it. A fix for next time would still be ace!
I have fixed this. I googled ‘unfoldmenu=1’ to see if I could manipulate the setting directly in the database or something, and found this post:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/294454
“Fixed the problem by dragging and dropping the “…/plugins.php?unfoldmenu=1″ URL into the address bar.”
(… can be any .php i.e. index.php?unfoldmenu=1 if you’re on the admin homepage!)
I had a similar problem. I didn’t have to really hack anything to fix it. All I had to do was click on the downward pointing arrow next to the menu item to drop down one of the submenus
Pages * <—
_______________
Edit
Add New
As long as all my sub-menues where collapsed, the whole menue would collapse down to the icons.
I’m not crazy about this, and I think it’s new.
My solution is to leave some of the sub-menues open, pages and posts, then it’s always the “wide” word and icon view.
Another way of stating it. As long as all your sub-menus are collapsed, the admin bar will collapse to icon view. If you widen it and click on the dropdown arrow on one menu, it will stick open.
So I installed WordPress 3 Beta 1. Minimized the sidebar, then un-minimized it. Oops, still stuck minimized.
Anyone know why it does this? I have zero plugins installed. I’m using Chrome, Safari, and Firefox web browsers.
I guess I’ll have to do some digging to figure this one out. I’ll report back here with what I find… unless someone here already knows.
“Fixed the problem by dragging and dropping the “…/plugins.php?unfoldmenu=1″ URL into the address bar.”
Sorry, but what do you mean that you “dragged and dropped the URL? Can you be more specific? What exactly did you click on and “drag”? Sorry, newbie here….
Thanks.