Navigating Folds

Problem

Your document contains folds and you want to use them for navigation. (To create folds see Manually Creating Folds).

Solution

Command	Action	Mnemonic
`zc`	Close the current fold.	close fold
`zo`	Open the current fold.	open fold
`zM`	Close all folds.	fold More
`zr`	Open one level of folds.	reduce folding
`zR`	Open all folds.	Reduce folding
`zj`	Move to the next fold.	`j` moves to the next line
`zk`	Move to the previous fold.	`k` moves to the previous line
`zm`	Close one level of folds.	Fold more
`zn`	Disable folding.	no folds
`zN`	Re-enable folding.	N is n toggled

Discussion

You can use zM to achieve a birds-eye view of the file, which can be useful when you're writing a long book and forget how the recipe you're currently writing relates to…

Vim treats folds like individual lines, so j and k move over one fold at a time. Further, you can yank/deleteyank is Vim terminology for copying text to the clipboard; see Copying, Cutting, and Pasting. a fold as if it was a single line.

By default, folds are forgotten when you edit another file. To save them use :mkview. Then, to restore them, use :loadview.

The :set foldcolumn=W command, where W is a integer width less than 13, displays a column along the left-hand side of the screen with information about the folds in the current file. It indicates whether the corresponding line is an open or closed fold (with - or +, respectively).