How to Install Libraries and Enable the pip Installer in Python
Python comes with a bunch of standard modules. My favorites are shutil, glob, datetime, time, os (operating system), re (regular expressions) and webbrowser. The standard library is loaded.
Inevitably, you'll want to install new libraries from Python's rich ecosystem of external modules. Enter pip, Python's handy package manager and people's champion.
This post will teach you some Python history, show how to install pandas, and help you troubleshoot problems if it's not working. You'll find Windows and Linux commands for venv setup (recommended). With pip, you'll feel like Neo when installing new modules. Any skill is at your fingertips. It's like learning kung fu. There's probably a library for that!

First, Some Python Version Caveats + History
Python 2 reached end of life on January 1st, 2020. Python 2 has officially been sunset.
Python comes with pip now, no setup is required. But certain versions such as Python 3.2 or the Python 2.7 that came stock on my improbably still functioning 2008 black Macbook, for example, may not have it installed.
In December 2021, Python 3.6 reached "end of life phase". Python 3.6 is "now effectively frozen". Read more in PEP 494. (Released Oct. 2022)
TLDR: use Python 3.7 to 3.11. This blog endorses using the lightning fast Python version 3.11.
Enter This in Your Terminal
python -m pip install pandas
Pandas is a super useful library for wrangling spreadsheet data, AKA "tabular" data. If successful, you should see activity that looks similar to the below screenshot, where I am installing openpyxl, an additional Python Excel library you'll likely want. You are good to go! This is the part where you get to feel like Neo! See Installing Python Modules in the Python Documentation for more detailed instructions.

To view all your installed libraries, enter:
pip list
Write a "requirements.txt" of installed libraries:
pip freeze > requirements.txt
You can list your outdated packages with the --outdated argument:
pip list --outdated
Use pip's -h help command line argument:
pip -h
View your system and user pip config settings:
pip config debug
Supplementary Resources
- Take a look at this list of 20 modules to get started. Here is another more comprehensive list of libraries you can now install.
- Swing by the pip documentation Quickstartand User Guide to learn some helpful commands.
- PyPI, the Python Package Index is the official Python package repository.
- Why you should use 'python -m pip'
- pip cheat sheet from opensource.com
Congrats on figuring out how to install packages with pip, have fun!
Having issues? Try upgrading your pip version.
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
Try the ensurepip command.
This command will install and upgrade pip to the newest version. New in Python 3.4:
python -m ensurepip --upgrade
"The ensurepip package provides support for bootstrapping the pip installer into an existing Python installation or virtual environment. This bootstrapping approach reflects the fact that pip is an independent project with its own release cycle, and the latest available stable version is bundled with maintenance and feature releases of the CPython reference interpreter."
You should follow best practice and create a virtual environment before installing libraries. venv or virtualenv. To create with venv:
python3 -m venv add_env_name_here
After your environment is created, activate it with the first command below, then install a library on Ubuntu Linux:
source add_env_path_here/bin activate python -m pip install pandas
Alternatively, on Windows computers:
cd add_env_path_here\scripts & activate python -m pip install pandas
Getting the prefix right can be tricky.
In the install command, the prefix is a reference to your Python executable. You may just need to alter your prefix to call it correctly. Here are some to try in place of "python". Observe what happens when you run these command variations. Good luck!
python3 -m pip install pandas python3.11 -m pip install pandas py -m pip install pandas pip3 install pandas
How to Manually Enable the pip Installer
The rest of this post may be useful to you if you are:
- Working on legacy Python 2 or < 3.3 for which pip is not installed.
- Seeking to fix a faulty pip install that is not working properly.
- Curious to know how to manually set up pip.
Assumes Python is already installed. If you're running Windows 10, I found it easy to install Python from the Windows store. Download the get-pip.py file. Go to the link, right click the page and "Save As" a .py file to download. Then place the file where you want to access it. I placed mine in C:Python27Libsite-packages
You could also download the file with curl:
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.pyt-pip.py
If you are not sure where your site-packages folder is, type python -m site into command prompt for file path ideas.
Run the get-pip.py file.
Using command prompt's cd command with a Windows "&" operator to run the Python file in a Windows command prompt:
cd c:\Python27\Lib\site-packages & python get-pip.py
Or Linux terminal:
cd /Python27/Lib/site-packages && python get-pip.py
You should see some activity in command prompt that shows installation/updating of "setup" and "wheel". When it finishes, you have installed pip.
Type into command prompt at the same location:
python -m pip install requests
This installs the Requests module into your Python libraries. Requests is an http module which is highly regarded almost universally by the Python community.
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