Python modules not working in IDLE - macos

Question

Working on Automate The Boring Stuff project and having trouble with pyperclip and IDLE. pyperclip is successfully downloaded and works fine in Terminal but when I import pyperclip in IDLE, I get the below error.
UPDATE - This is happening with other modules - anything I've installed in the terminal aren't importing into IDLE.
import pyperclip
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in
import pyperclip
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pyperclip'
I figure I have the module saved in the wrong folder somehow. Below are the sys.path outputs from my Terminal and IDLE.
In terminal:
'/anaconda/bin',
'//anaconda/lib/python36.zip',
'//anaconda/lib/python3.6',
'//anaconda/lib/python3.6/lib-dynload',
'//anaconda/lib/python3.6/site-packages',
'//anaconda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/Sphinx-1.5.1-py3.6.egg',
'//anaconda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/aeosa',
'//anaconda/lib/python3.6/site-packages/IPython/extensions',
'/Users/andrewricardo/.ipython']
In IDLE:
sys.path
['', '/Users/andrewricardo/Documents', '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python36.zip', '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6', '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/lib-dynload', '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages']
There are multiple paths here - how do I effectively move the pyperclip module to the correct place?
OR - Is there something else going on here?

Answer 1

Each python installation and uses its own .../lib/site-packages for 3rd party modules, and you have two. If you ran the non-anaconda python in the terminal, the same that is running IDLE, it would have the same problem. Indeed, that python is the source of the ImportErrors.
Option 1: Separately install all packages you want to use with the non-anaconda python (and IDLE) in its own site-package directory. In IDLE Shell, get the path to its executable
>>> import sys; sys.executable
Save are remember the resulting 'python-path'. Then in the terminal, run
python-path -m pip install package-name
for each package.
Option 2 (uses a little known feature of site-package directories): in
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/site-packages
add a file name, for instance, anaconda.pth, containing one line.
//anaconda/lib/python3.6/site-packages
(I have no idea why the double / or if it is really needed; I just copied it from your question.) This makes the anaconda python site-packages an extension of the framework python site-packages. Since both are for 3.6, one copy should work for both.

Answer 2

Had this same issue and googled
'why is importing pyperclip in my python file giving an "modulenotfounderror"but working fine in the idle'
and this page came up. then i also checked this [installed Pyperclip, trouble importing to IDLE.
I am new to python, had the same issue using the same book after pip installing pyperclip here's what I did to solve this issue.
I copied the pyperclip-1.7.0-py3.7.egg-info and pyperclip folders from
C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\Lib\site-packages into the C:\Users\USER\Anaconda3\Lib\site-packages folders and C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37 folders and it worked. Hope this helps. If it doesn't. Try this code in your text editor because that's what I did using Atom and how i was able to solve it.
import sys
print(sys.executable)
Then copy the pyperclip-1.7.0-py3.7.egg-info and pyperclip folders into the path that the above code gives you.