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

Question

I am getting the "ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found." when importing the module seaborn.

I tried uninstalling both seaborn and matplotlib, then reinstalling by using

pip install seaborn 

but no luck. I still get the same error.

ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-5-085c0287ecb5> in <module>()
----> 1 import seaborn

C:\Users\johnsam\venv\lib\site-packages\seaborn\__init__.py in <module>()
      4 
      5 # Import seaborn objects
----> 6 from .rcmod import *
      7 from .utils import *
      8 from .palettes import *

C:\Users\johnsam\venv\lib\site-packages\seaborn\rcmod.py in <module>()
      6 import matplotlib as mpl
      7 
----> 8 from . import palettes, _orig_rc_params
      9 
     10 

C:\Users\johnsam\venv\lib\site-packages\seaborn\palettes.py in <module>()
     10 from .external.six.moves import range
     11 
---> 12 from .utils import desaturate, set_hls_values, get_color_cycle
     13 from .xkcd_rgb import xkcd_rgb
     14 from .crayons import crayons

C:\Users\johnsam\venv\lib\site-packages\seaborn\utils.py in <module>()
      6 
      7 import numpy as np
----> 8 from scipy import stats
      9 import pandas as pd
     10 import matplotlib as mpl

C:\Program Files\Continuum\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\scipy\stats\__init__.py in <module>()
    332 from __future__ import division, print_function, absolute_import
    333 
--> 334 from .stats import *
    335 from .distributions import *
    336 from .rv import *

C:\Program Files\Continuum\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\scipy\stats\stats.py in <module>()
    179 from scipy.lib.six import callable, string_types
    180 from numpy import array, asarray, ma, zeros, sum
--> 181 import scipy.special as special
    182 import scipy.linalg as linalg
    183 import numpy as np

C:\Program Files\Continuum\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\scipy\special\__init__.py in <module>()
    544 from __future__ import division, print_function, absolute_import
    545 
--> 546 from ._ufuncs import *
    547 
    548 from .basic import *

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

Is there a way to get around this error?

Answer 1

I was having this issue until I uninstalled and reinstalled scipy with the pip command. Just got to your command line and type pip uninstall scipy and pip install scipy.

Hopefully that works for you as well. I also uninstalled/installed seaborn before this although I'm not sure if that was necessary.

Using conda rather than pip may also work.

Answer 2

What solved this for me was installing seaborn via conda:

conda install seaborn

And then restarting the kernel