How to solve import error for pandas?

Question

I installed Anaconda with python 2.7.7.
However, whenever I run "import pandas" I get the error:
"ImportError: C extension: y not built. If you want to import pandas from the source directory, you may need to run 'python setup.py build_ext --inplace' to build the C extensions first."
I tried running the suggested command but it stated that

skipping 'pandas\index.c' Cython extension (up-to-date)       skipping 'pandas\src\period.c' Cython extension (up-to-date)  skipping 'pandas\algos.c' Cython extension (up-to-date)       skipping 'pandas\lib.c' Cython extension (up-to-date)         skipping 'pandas\tslib.c' Cython extension (up-to-date)       skipping 'pandas\parser.c' Cython extension (up-to-date)      skipping 'pandas\hashtable.c' Cython extension (up-to-date)   skipping 'pandas\src\sparse.c' Cython extension (up-to-date)  skipping 'pandas\src\testing.c' Cython extension (up-to-date) skipping 'pandas\msgpack.cpp' Cython extension (up-to-date) 

Has anyone encountered this before and found a solution?

Answer 1

I was having the same problem now with Python 3.4.3.

I was using pandas-0.18.0.

Upgrading (using pip) solved the issue for me:

[sudo] pip install --upgrade pandas 

The final result of the upgrade:

Successfully installed numpy-1.13.3 pandas-0.21.0 python-dateutil-2.6.1 pytz-2017.3 six-1.11.0 

After this, the issue was gone!

Answer 2

Pandas has portions of its code written in C to make it run faster. If you tried to install pandas manually you would need to build it. Try reinstalling it with miniconda package manager here: http://conda.pydata.org/miniconda.html

and then you can just do

conda install pandas 

There are very simple instructions on how to do it in the link below. Just do ctrl-f miniconda to find the section that talks about it

http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/dev/install.html