CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vimwindows-7
Samaursa
Samaursa

Reputation: 17197

Vim settings file on Windows

I can't believe I am typing a question for a simple thing like this but here we are. I can't for the life of me figure out what the exact name for the settings file is for vim on Windows (.vimrc does not work on Windows). And if I have names right (read the next para) then I don't know why it is not picking up the settings from it.

I tried creating _vimrc and _gvimrc in the root directory where I copied the file from the example settings file that came installed with vim. I set the following command on top of the example commands:

set nobackup
set nowritebackup
set guifont=Courier_New:h11:cANSI

It is not accepting this file (whether it is named _vimrc or _gvimrc, I tried both) as the settings file as the font has not changed on the next start-up and still writes backup files.

Upvotes: 51

Views: 101110

Answers (4)

Sochatama Gotchadha
Sochatama Gotchadha

Reputation: 11

It may be under [Your Installation Directory]/Vim/.

In my case, the _vimrc file is under C:/Program Files (x86)/Vim/. Because C:/Program Files (x86)/Vim was the default installation directory when I installed Vim on Windows 10 from the executable installer available at https://www.vim.org/download.php.

Upvotes: 1

suhair
suhair

Reputation: 10929

Why not just edit the vimrc file in vim itself and figure it out its name?. Using the following command.

:e $MYVIMRC

As ghiscoding mentions in a comment, you may need to run Vim as an administrator to be able to save your changes.

Upvotes: 35

VimUser
VimUser

Reputation: 181

On Windows systems, the best way to find the value of $HOME is from within Vim, as follows. These commands are useful to see what directories your Vim is using:

:version
:echo expand('~')
:echo $HOME
:echo $VIM
:echo $VIMRUNTIME

Note the system vimrc file and user vimrc file paths displayed by the :version command. The system vimrc file can be created by an administrator to customize Vim for all users. In addition, each user can have his or her own user vimrc.

Upvotes: 18

eckes
eckes

Reputation: 67047

my _vimrc/_gvimrc is stored at C:/Users/<ME>/_vimrc and is working fine.

It's generally a good idea to keep personal settings separate from installation files.

To get more information about the search paths for your configuration files, type :he vimrc-intro.

And be careful: the docs say

For MS-DOS and MS-Windows you can use one of these:
$HOME/_vimrc
$VIM/_vimrc

While this is absolutely true, it could be a bit surprising that $VIM does not expand to e.g. C:/Program Files/vim/<your_version> (this is what $VIMRUNTIME holds) but only to C:/Program Files/vim/.

This said, C:/Program Files/vim/_vimrc should be read during startup.

Upvotes: 46

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