How to select all and copy in vim?

Question

how to select all and copy in vim insert mode? and is there another way to do it in normal mode?

I have tried visual mode and gg and shift + gg to select all and then yank, however that doesn't transfer it to the clipboard to be able to paste it in another application like skype or chrome browser.

I am sure this is a common task, and there are a lot of varieties by smarter ppl than me out there, please feel free to share yours.

Answer 1

In normal mode:

gg"+yG

In ex mode:

:%y+

Answer 2

There are a few important informations missing from your question:

• output of $ vim --version?
• OS?
• CLI or GUI?
• local or remote?
• do you use tmux? screen?

If your Vim was built with clipboard support, you are supposed to use the clipboard register like this, in normal mode:

gg"+yG 

If your Vim doesn't have clipboard support, you can manage to copy text from Vim to your OS clipboard via other programs. This pretty much depends on your OS but you didn't say what it is so we can't really help.

However, if your Vim is crippled, the best thing to do is to install a proper build with clipboard support but I can't tell you how either because I don't know what OS you use.

edit

On debian based systems, the following command will install a proper Vim with clipboard, ruby, python… support.

$ sudo apt-get install vim-gnome