E185: Cannot find color scheme*

Question

I have been customizing my vimrc file but for some reason, no colorschemes work. Whenever I try to change the colorscheme, it just gives me:

E185: Cannot find color scheme '*'

I checked the color folder to make sure I actually have colors and I do. For example the first item in the color folder is blue.vim but when I put colorscheme blue in the vimrc, it just gives

E185: Cannot find color scheme 'blue'

when I start Vim and the colorscheme doesn't apply. I also tried changing the colorscheme from within Vim and it also returns the same error. All the other vimrc settings that I've tried work so far.

Answer 1

I recently had this error. The problem in my case was that the name of the colorscheme in the file was different from the file name. Renaming the colorscheme in the file fixed it for me.

In COLOR1.vim:

let g:colors_name = "COLOR2"

Changing to:

let g:colors_name = "COLOR1"

fixed the problem.

I assume that changing the file name would also fix this.

Answer 2

For me it worked by removing the extension from the colorscheme file.

Try to rename blue.vim to blue.

Answer 3

This sounds like a problem with your 'runtimepath' option. If you use a plugin manager, these usually extend that. The default location should be ~/.vim/colors. Please check with

:set runtimepath?

There should be a ~/.vim in there (or equivalent).

If all else fails, you could also just :source /full/path/to/your/color.vim