This is a surprising problem that may be specific to vim (as opposed to classical vi). I have never personally come across it - I have often enough yanked and pasted hundreds of lines without problems; but I never use vim's fancy features. One of the first things I do is to set compatible mode in .vimrc:

set t_ti= t_te=
set compatible
set expandtab ts=4 sw=4 ai
set esckeys
set ttimeoutlen=100

The other lines are just what I find useful (eg. set t_ti= t_te= ensures that the screen isn't blanked when you leave vi).

The way I copy/paste is:

• Mark the start or end of what you want to copy with ma (other letter than a are available)
• Move to the other end of the text area
• Yank with 'a
• Paste with p (after) or P (before)

This is a surprising problem that may be specific to Vim (as opposed to classical vi). I have never personally come across it—I have often enough yanked and pasted hundreds of lines without problems; but I never use Vim's fancy features. One of the first things I do is to set compatible mode in .vimrc:

set t_ti= t_te=
set compatible
set expandtab ts=4 sw=4 ai
set esckeys
set ttimeoutlen=100

The other lines are just what I find useful (eg. set t_ti= t_te= ensures that the screen isn't blanked when you leave vi).

The way I copy/paste is:

• Mark the start or end of what you want to copy with ma (other letter than a are available)
• Move to the other end of the text area
• Yank with 'ay
• Paste with p (after) or P (before)