Setting TAB to 2 spaces

Question

I've looked through various answers which imply that setting the following in .vimrc would be appropriate to force tab insertions to become spaces.

filetype plugin indent on
" On pressing tab, insert 2 spaces
set expandtab
" show existing tab with 2 spaces width
set tabstop=2
set softtabstop=2
" when indenting with '>', use 2 spaces width
set shiftwidth=2

However, when I attempt to use 2 spaces, it continues to default to 4 spaces per tab. I have tried moving set expandtab to the bottom of these declarations. I have tried removing the softtabstop declaration. I've scoured the various answers given to other questions as well.

Answer 1

Have you sourced your .vimrc since making these changes? When having vim open just type source ~/.vimrc (assuming it is in it's default location)

EDIT: This could help too

Answer 2

This should fix your problem. It has more options, but two first lines are most important.

set tabstop=2 softtabstop=2 shiftwidth=2
set expandtab
set number ruler
set autoindent smartindent
syntax enable
filetype plugin indent on