How to ensure that Spyder runs within a conda environment?

Question

I created a conda environment called testenv in Windows 10 that contains Python 3.6 and Spyder. I also installed Selenium using the method described in this answer. I checked that these packages are installed with

conda list -n testenv

To run Spyder in that environment I followed the instructions in this answer and its related comments. So I activated the environment with

activate testenv

which modified the prompt to indicate that testenv is active. Then I typed

spyder

to launch Spyder. (When Spyder opens, my command window automatically closes, and if I open another one without closing Spyder, and I issue the command conda info -e, the output indicates that testenv is no longer active.) At this point, when I run code within Spyder that contains the line

from selenium import webdriver

the Spyder console reports

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'selenium'

My questions are:

Is Spyder really running in testenv? If so, why is this error being reported? If not, what am I doing wrong?

---

EDIT: Further research turned up the aptly-named thread "Spyder does not run in Anaconda virtual environment on Windows 10". I followed the suggestion, in the accepted answer, of installing Spyder after activating the environment, but that just returned the message

# All requested packages already installed.
# packages in environment at C:\Anaconda3\envs\testenv:
#
spyder                    3.2.2                    py36_0

One of that answer's comments suggests using where spyder within the active environment to check which executables are available. This returned

C:\Anaconda3\Scripts\spyder.exe
C:\Anaconda3\envs\testenv\Scripts\spyder.exe

So I tried starting Spyder by typing the full path of the second entry. Spyder opened, and my program ran without errors. This seems to have solved the problem.

Answer 1

I issued the command where spyder within the active environment to check the locations of Spyder's executables. This returned

C:\Anaconda3\Scripts\spyder.exe
C:\Anaconda3\envs\testenv\Scripts\spyder.exe

So I started Spyder by typing the full path of the second entry, and my program ran without errors.

Answer 2

You can also use the Windows based link that is generated in the Windows menu. The steps:

1. (in anaconda:) activate testenv

2. (in anaconda testenv:) conda install spyder

3. Look up the windows menu "recently added", find spyder (testenv) and [add that to taskbar] and / or [look up the file source location] and copy that to your desktop. In my case, the latter approach opened the directory C:\Users\USER\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Anaconda3 (64-bit) where the spyder links for any of my environments could be found; you can then copy them to your desktop for a direct start without the need to open anaconda prompt.