PackageNotInstalledError: Package is not installed in prefix

Question

conda update conda >> successful

conda update anaconda >> gives me error saying package is not installed in prefix.

I have single installation of Python distribution on my system. How do I solve this issue?

(base) C:\Users\asukumari>conda info 

 active environment : base active env location : C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3         shell level : 1    user config file : C:\Users\asukumari\.condarc  populated config files : C:\Users\asukumari\.condarc       conda version : 4.5.9 conda-build version : 3.4.1      python version : 3.6.4.final.0    base environment : C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3  (writable)        channel URLs : https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/win-64                       https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/main/noarch                       https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/win-64                       https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/free/noarch                       https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/win-64                       https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/r/noarch                       https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/pro/win-64                       https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/pro/noarch                       https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/win-64                       https://repo.anaconda.com/pkgs/msys2/noarch       package cache : C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3\pkgs                       C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\conda\conda\pkgs    envs directories : C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\Continuum\anaconda3\envs                       C:\Users\asukumari\AppData\Local\conda\conda\envs                       C:\Users\asukumari\.conda\envs            platform : win-64          user-agent : conda/4.5.9 requests/2.18.4 CPython/3.6.4 Windows/10 Windows/10.0.16299       administrator : False          netrc file : None        offline mode : False 

Answer 1

Usually this error, "PackageNotInstalledError: Package is not installed in prefix." is because your custom environment doesn't have the conda infrastructure. Instead, it is in your base only. To update the base environment:

conda update --name base conda 

To see what version you have installed:

conda list --name base conda 

example output of list;

# packages in environment at /Users/me/miniconda2: # # Name                    Version                   Build  Channel conda                     4.6.14                   py27_0   conda-env                 2.6.0                h36134e3_0