Unable to import a module that is definitely installed

Question

After installing mechanize  I don t seem to be able to import it   I have tried installing from pip  easy install  and via python setup py install from this repo  https   github com abielr mechanize  All of this to no avail  as each time I enter my Python interactive I get   Python 2 7 3  default  Aug  1 2012  05 14 39    GCC 4 6 3  on linux2 Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import mechanize Traceback  most recent call last     File   lt stdin gt    line 1  in  lt module gt  ImportError  No module named mechanize  gt  gt  gt     The installations I ran previously reported that they had completed successfully  so I expect the import to work  What could be causing this error

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Something that worked for me was   python -m pip install -user  package name    The command does not require sudo  This was tested on OSX Mojave

User · Answer

It s the python path problem   In my case  I have python installed in       Library Frameworks Python framework Versions 2 6 bin python    and there is no site-packages directory within the python2 6   The package SOAPpy  I installed by pip is located    System Library Frameworks Python framework Versions 2 6 lib python2 6 site-packages    And site-package is not in the python path  all I did is add site-packages to PYTHONPATH permanently    Open up Terminal Type open  bash profile In the text file that pops up  add this line at the end     export PYTHONPATH  PYTHONPATH  System Library Frameworks Python framework Versions 2 6 lib python2 6 site-packages  Save the file  restart the Terminal  and you re done

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Maybe a bit off-topic  but i had issues to import PyYAML  Points out that you need to import yaml   guess it s a classical rtfm

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I encountered this while trying to use keyring which I installed via sudo pip install keyring  As mentioned in the other answers  it s a permissions issue in my case   What worked for me    Uninstalled keyring     sudo pip uninstall keyring  I used sudo s -H option and reinstalled keyring     sudo -H pip install keyring    Hope this helps

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In my case I had to also install the module s  for the superuser  too    sudo su pip install  lt module gt    Apparently the superuse cannot access the normal users files under certain circumstances

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In my case I had run pip install Django  1 11 and it would not import from the python interpreter   Browsing through pip s commands I found pip show which looked like this    gt  pip show Django Name  Django Version  1 11     Location   usr lib python3 4 site-packages       Notice the location says  3 4   I found that the python-command was linked to python2 7   usr bin gt  ls -l python lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Mar 14 15 48 python - gt  python2 7   Right next to that I found a link called python3 so I used that  You could also change the link to python3 4  That would fix it  too

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I have solved my issue that same libraries were working fine in one project A  but importing those same libraries in another project B  caused error  I am using Pycharm as IDE at Windows OS  So  after trying many potential solutions and failing to solve the issue  I did these two things  deleted  Venv  folder  and reconfigured interpreter    1-In project B   there was a folder named  venv    located in External Libraries   I deleted that folder   2-Step 1  deleting  venv  folder  causes error in Python Interpreter Configuration  and    there is a message shown at top of screen saying  Invalid python interpreter selected    for the project  and  configure python interpreter   select that link and it opens a    new window  There in  Project Interpreter  drop-down list  there is a Red colored line    showing previous invalid interpreter  Now  Open this list and select the Python    Interpreter in my case  it is Python 3 7   Press  Apply  and  OK  at the bottom and you    are good to go    Note  It was potentially the issue where Virtual Environment of my Project B  was not recognizing the already installed and working libraries

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I had a similar problem using Django  In my case  I could import the module from the Django shell  but not from a  py which imported the module  The problem was that I was running the Django server  therefore  executing the  py  from a different virtualenv from which the module had been installed   Instead  the shell instance was being run in the correct virtualenv  Hence  why it worked

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I had the same problem  script with import colorama was throwing and ImportError  but sudo pip install colorama was telling me  package already installed    My fix  run pip without sudo  pip install colorama   Then pip agreed it needed to be installed  installed it  and my script ran   My environment is Ubuntu 14 04 32-bit  I think I saw this before and after I activated my virtualenv   UPDATE  even better  use python -m pip install  lt package gt    The benefit of this is  since you are executing the specific version of python that you want the package in  pip will unequivocally install the package in to the  right  python   Again  don t use sudo in this case    then you get the package in the right place  but possibly with  unwanted  root permissions

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I know this is a super old post but for me  I had an issue with a 32 bit python and 64 bit python installed  Once I uninstalled the 32 bit python  everything worked as it should

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I couldn t get my PYTHONPATH to work properly   I realized adding export fixed the issue    did work   export PYTHONPATH  PYTHONPATH   test site-packages   vs    did not work   PYTHONPATH  PYTHONPATH   test site-packages

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In my case  it is permission problem  The package was somehow installed with root rw permission only  other user just cannot rw to it

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I had colorama installed via pip and I was getting  quot ImportError  No module named colorama quot  So I searched with  quot find quot   found the absolute path and added it in the script like this  import sys sys path append  quot  usr local lib python3 8 dist-packages  quot   import colorama   And it worked

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Also  make sure that you do not confuse pip3 with pip  What I found was that package installed with pip was not working with python3 and vice-versa

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In my case it was a problem with a missing init py file in the module  that I wanted to import in a Python 2 7 environment   Python 3 3  has Implicit Namespace Packages that allow it to create a packages without an init py file

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Had this problem too   the package was installed on Python 3 8 0 but VS Code was running my script using an older version  3 4   fix in terminal   py  py  Make sure you re installing the package on the right Python Version

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I have been banging my head against my monitor on this until a young-hip intern told me the secret is to  python setup py install  inside the module directory   For some reason  running the setup from there makes it just work   To be clear  if your module s name is  foo     burnc7  2016-06-21 15 28 49  git   ls -l total 1 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root  118 Jun 21 15 22 foo  burnc7  2016-06-21 15 28 51  git   cd foo  burnc7  2016-06-21 15 28 53  foo   ls -l total 2 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   93 Jun 21 15 23 foo -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  416 May 31 12 26 setup py  burnc7  2016-06-21 15 28 54  foo   python setup py install  lt --snip-- gt    If you try to run setup py from any other directory by calling out its path  you end up with a borked install   DOES NOT WORK   python  root foo setup py install   DOES WORK   cd  root foo python setup py install

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The Python import mechanism works  really  so  either    Your PYTHONPATH is wrong  Your library is not installed where you think it is You have another library with the same name masking this one

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For me it was ensuring the version of the module aligned with the version of Python I was using   I built the image on a box with Python 3 6 and then injected into a Docker image that happened to have 3 7 installed  and then banging my head when Python was telling me the module wasn t installed     36m for Python 3 6 bsonnumpy cpython-36m-x86 64-linux-gnu so  37m for Python 3 7 bsonnumpy cpython-37m-x86 64-linux-gnu so

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If you are using a virtual environment use pipenv install  lt module name gt  instead of pip install  lt module name gt   Worked for me

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I am new to python  I fixed this issue by changing the project interpreter path  File - gt  Settings - gt  Project - gt  Project Interpreter

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This solution doesn t apply for everyone  Only for a specific set of newbies  LIKE ME  who did a specific set of actions  None of the above answers were working for me  So what caused the problem  Previously I had a project with venv setup inside root  Later I created a new user and decided to move the project to this user  And instead of moving only the source files and installing the dependencies freshly  I moved the entire project along with the venv folder to the new user  Because I was not aware of these issues   After that the dependencies that I installed were getting added to the global site-packages instead of the one inside venv folder  So the code running inside this env was not able to access those dependencies  Solution  Just removed the venv folder and recreated it again        deactivate       rm -rf venv       python3 -m venv venv       source venv bin activate       pip install -r requirements txt

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Most of the possible cases have been already covered in solutions  just sharing my case  it happened to me that I installed a package in one environment  e g  X  and I was importing the package in another environment  e g  Y   So  always make sure that you re importing the package from the environment in which you installed the package

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I was able to correct this issue with a combined approach  First  I followed Chris  advice  opened a command line and typed  pip show packagename  This provided the location of the installed package   Next  I opened python and typed  import sys   then  sys path  to show where my python searches for any packages I import  Alas  the location shown in the first step was NOT in the list    Final step  I typed  sys path append  package location seen in step 1    You optionally can repeat step two to see the location is now in the list   Test step  try to import the package again    it works     The downside  It is temporary  and you need to add it to the list each time

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This Works     This often happens when module is installed to an older version of python or another directory  no worries as solution is simple   - import module from directory in which module is installed  You can do this by first importing the python sys module then importing from the path in which the module is installed  import sys sys path append  directory in which module is installed    import  lt module name gt

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I had this problem with 2 7 and 3 5 installed on my system trying to test a telegram bot with Python-Telegram-Bot   I couldn t get it to work after installing with pip and pip3  with sudo or without  I always got   Traceback  most recent call last     File  telegram py   line 2  in  lt module gt      from telegram ext import Updater   File   USER telegram py   line 2  in  lt module gt      from telegram ext import Updater ImportError  No module named  telegram ext    telegram  is not a package   Reading the error message correctly tells me that python is looking in the current directory for a telegram py  And right  I had a script lying there called telegram py and this was loaded by python when I called import   Conclusion  make sure you don t have any package py in your current working dir when trying to import   And read error message thoroughly

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When you install via easy install or pip  is it completing successfully  What is the full output  Which python installation are you using  You may need to use sudo before your installation command  if you are installing modules to a system directory  if you are using the system python installation  perhaps   There s not a lot of useful information in your question to go off of  but some tools that will probably help include    echo  PYTHONPATH and or echo  PATH  when importing modules  Python searches one of these environment variables  lists of directories    delimited  for the module you want  Importing problems are often due to the right directory being absent from these lists which python  which pip  or which easy install  these will tell you the location of each executable  It may help to know  Use virtualenv  like  JesseBriggs suggests  It works very well with pip to help you isolate and manage the modules and environment for separate Python projects

User · Answer

If you learn how to use virtualenv  which is pretty dead-simple   you will have less of these issues  You ll just source the virtualenv and then you will be using local  to the project  packages   It solves a lot of headache for me with paths  versions  etc

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As a friend did for me today  here is what helped me  I am using Windows    Press  Setting  -   Project  -   Project Interpreter   Here in the window on the right  there is a line with the title  Project Interpreter  on it s left  Click this line and it will open several additional lines   Now press the  Show All  line  A window will open   In this window press the small     sign in the upper right corner   A new window will open  On the left there are 4 tabs  press the most upper one  which says  Virtualenv Environment    Now  in the window on the right  mark the  Existing Environment  option  The  Interpreter  line will become well visible  Press the       button on the right of the line     Now  a browsing window will open  Browse to the directory that you installed Python itself in  Not the one with PyCharm  When you get there  choose the  python exe  file and press OK  the window will disappear    Press OK again  this window will disappear too    Now in this window make sure the new line you created is marked  and press OK again    Now  all the installed packages should be visible in the project interpreter  and are read by your program

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Simplest solution that worked for me that I don t see mentioned in this thread   I have multiple versions of Python installed but was trying to use Python3 7 -- so I had to use    sudo pip3 7 install  lt package gt

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If the other answers mentioned do not work for you  try deleting your pip cache and reinstalling the package  My machine runs Ubuntu14 04 and it was located under    cache pip  Deleting this folder did the trick for me

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I had this exact problem  but none of the answers above worked  It drove me crazy until I noticed that sys path was different after I had imported from the parent project  It turned out that I had used importlib to write a little function in order to import a file not in the project hierarchy  Bad idea  I forgot that I had done this  Even worse  the import process mucked with the sys path--and left it that way  Very bad idea   The solution was to stop that  and simply put the file I needed to import into the project  Another approach would have been to put the file into its own project  as it needs to be rebuilt from time to time  and the rebuild may or may not coincide with the rebuild of the main project

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I had similar problem  on Windows  and the root cause in my case was ANTIVIRUS software  It has  Auto-Containment  feature  that wraps running process with some kind of a virtual machine  Symptoms are  pip install somemodule works fine in one cmd-line window and import somemodule fails when executed from another process with the error      ModuleNotFoundError  No module named  somemodule    I hope it will save some time to somebody

[python] Unable to import a module that is definitely installed

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