Visual Studio Code – For beginners: Module not Found but Requirement already satisfied example using PyPDF2

This post has two parts:

1. To help beginners starting up with creating virtual environments and installing packages for Python in Visual studio Code (I am on MACOS however should be able to follow on windows)

2. A question of trying to Resolve why PyPDF2 package doesn’t seem to install.

VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS AND PACKAGE INSTILLATION VIA PIP3

Creating New Virtual Environment (.VIRTUAL_ENV)

1. change directory to location you want to create virtual environment (cd)
2. python3 - m venv .VIRTUAL_ENV (or whatever name you wish to call it)

Activating Virtual Environment:

1. Copy Path of virtual environment
   

2. Activate it (source /bin/activate.)
   

Check packages in Virtual Environment (Empty as nothing installed)

Selecting Interpreter

Print hello to make sure all is working okay.

Demoing Expected Behaviour using numpy

1. numpy not yet installed.

2. pip3 install numpy

And we can see the numpy package(s) are added to the library

same again with pip3 install matplotlib.

Alot more packages are being added this time but successfully installs without issue.

Checking both installed okay:

Now for PyPDF2:

Before installing:

pip3 install PyPDF2

Package appears to install correctly, yellow squiggle disappears all seems okay.

But when I run the script now:

and again just to confirm that is the case:

Requirement already satisfied: PyPDF2 in ./.VIRTUAL_ENV/lib/python3.13/site-packages

final checks:

pip3 show PyPDF2

pip3 list

If anyone can assist on why this is the case it would be appreciated.

I have looked at the following post however the suggestions here either dont work or are for windows:

"no module named PyPDF2" error