如何在 PyCharm 上使用 anaconda 修复导入错误？

Question

I am on Windows 10, I've been using matplotlib as part of anaconda with PyCharm as my IDE for a while but today when I opened it and ran my script it gives me:

ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

the full error message is:

File "C:/Users/user/PycharmProjects/Myproject/Myprogram", line 3, in <module>
    from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
  File "C:\Users\user\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\pyplot.py", line 36, in <module>
    from matplotlib.figure import Figure, figaspect
  File "C:\Users\user\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\figure.py", line 35, in <module>
    from matplotlib import _image
  File "C:\Users\user\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\_image.py", line 7, in <module>
    __bootstrap__()
  File "C:\Users\user\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\_image.py", line 6, in __bootstrap__
    imp.load_dynamic(__name__,__file__)
  File "C:\Users\user\Anaconda3\lib\imp.py", line 342, in load_dynamic
    return _load(spec)
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

I added every PATH variables I could think of but it is still giving me the same error. I uninstalled/reinstalled both anaconda and Pycharm to no avail.

As I said this is very odd because the exact same script had been running without problems for a while.

Answer 1

One of my students reported the same issue with import matplotlib into Jupyter notebook. He removed Anaconda with the software add/remove tool, removed the Anaconda folder, and then reinstalled. That seems to have fixed things for him. This has now worked in two cases.

Answer 2

I found that I could create import errors by using PyCharm's module update function. Instead, on Windows, go to the command line, and use the conda update <module name> command. This will fetch the modules from the right repositories. Running conda update anaconda fixed my import problems by downgrading many packages I had updated with PyCharm's update facility.