How to insert tab character when expandtab option is on in Vim

Question

When I\'m in insert mode and I have the expandtab option switched on, pressing Tab ↹ results in inserting the configured number of spaces.

But occasionally I

Answer 1

You can disable expandtab option from within Vim as below:

:set expandtab!

or

:set noet

PS: And set it back when you are done with inserting tab, with "set expandtab" or "set et"

PS: If you have tab set equivalent to 4 spaces in .vimrc (softtabstop), you may also like to set it to 8 spaces in order to be able to insert a tab by pressing tab key once instead of twice (set softtabstop=8).