How to display each location of Windows PATH on a separate line using the GUI

Question

I don't know what changed about my settings, but recently the dialog box under Advanced System Settings -> Environmental Variables -> System Variables -> select Path -> Edit is not showing each location on a separate line like it used to be. My machine runs on Windows 10.

I would like to go from

https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/screenshot.4-2-650x187.png

to this

https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2016-03-24_11h02_18.png

Answer 1

If I follow these steps, I get to the expected dialog

1. Click Start
2. Type environment variables
3. Select
4. Select Environment Variables from the System Properties dialog
5. Find Path in the System Variables section
6. Click Edit... with Path highlighted in the table of System Variables This results in the below

An alternative solution is to run $env:Path -split ';' in PowerShell, which will return a list of environment Path variables.

Answer 2

There are two known Windows bugs that prevent the multi-line display of the PATH:

1. If the first character of the PATH is %, except when this is %SYSTEMROOT% (link)
2. If the PATH is malformed, for example if the separator is not ;

If these conditions do not apply to your problem, then you might have a Windows 10 corruption that you should check using SFC and DISM.

For desperate cases, an alternative software is the free System Path Commander.
Although an old product, I tested and it still works on Windows 10.

Answer 3

I had the same problem as you and I didn't realize it until this question. I did some investigating and it turns out that the following is true:

If your Path environmental variable actually only contains one path, it is showing the single-line edit control. If it contains a ; which means there are multiple parameters, then it treats it as multi-line and the dialogue box changes to what you expect to see.

For me to get the multi-line box, all I have to do is append a ; at the end. If your current path contains invalid characters, the current path will be hidden and only one empty line is shown instead. The control does give a button called Edit Text to restore it back to a single line edit control, so you can get back to what it was.