matplotlib error - no module named tkinter

Question

I tried to use the matplotlib package via Pycharm IDE on windows 10. when I run this code:

from matplotlib import pyplot

I get the followin

Answer 1

For windows users, re-run the installer. Select Modify. Check the box for tcl/tk and IDLE. The description for this says "Installs tkinter"

Answer 2

Maybe you installed python from source. In this case, you can recompile python with tcl/tk supported.

1. Complie and install tcl/tk from http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/download.html, I'll suppose you installed python at /home/xxx/local/tcl-tk/.

# install tcl
wget -c https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tcl8.6.9-src.tar.gz
tar -xvzf tcl8.6.9-src.tar.gz
cd tcl8.6.9
./configure --prefix=/home/xxx/local/tcl-tk/
make
make install

# install tk
wget -c https://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tk8.6.9.1-src.tar.gz
tar -xvzf tk8.6.9.1-src.tar.gz
cd tk8.6.9.1
./configure --prefix=/home/xxx/local/tcl-tk/
make
make install

2. Recompile python with tcl/tk supported, for example:

# download the source code of python and decompress it first.

cd <your-python-src-dir>
./configure --prefix=/home/xxx/local/python \
 --with-tcltk-includes=/home/xxx/local/tcl-tk/include \
 --with-tcltk-libs=/home/xxx/local/tcl-tk/lib
make 
make install

Answer 3

On Ubuntu, early 2018, there is no python3.6-tk on ubuntu's (xenial/16.04) normal distributions, so even if you have earlier versions of python-tk this won't work.

My solution was to use set everything up with python 3.5:

 sudo apt install python3.5-tk
 virtualenv --python=`which python3.5` python-env
 source python-env/bin/activate
 pip install -r requirements.txt

And now matplotlib can find tkinter.

EDIT:

I just needed 3.6 afterall, and the trick was to:

sudo apt install tk-dev

and then rebuild python3.6, after tk-dev, eg:

./configure
make
make install

Answer 4

Almost all answers I searched for this issue say that Python on Windows comes with tkinter and tcl already installed, and I had no luck trying to download or install them using pip, or actviestate.com site. I eventually found that when I was installing python using the binary installer, I had unchecked the module related to TCL and tkinter. So, I ran the binary installer again and chose to modify my python version by this time selecting this option. No need to do anything manually then. If you go to your python terminal, then the following commands should show you version of tkinter installed with your Python:

import tkinter
import _tkinter
tkinter._test()

Answer 5

For the poor guys like me using python 3.7. You need the python3.7-tk package.

sudo apt install python3.7-tk

$ python
Python 3.7.4 (default, Sep  2 2019, 20:44:09)
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import tkinter
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'tkinter'
>>> exit()

Note. python3-tk is installed. But not python3.7-tk.

$ sudo apt install python3.7-tk
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
  tix python3.7-tk-dbg
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  python3.7-tk
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 34 not upgraded.
Need to get 143 kB of archives.
After this operation, 534 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ppa.launchpad.net/deadsnakes/ppa/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 python3.7-tk amd64 3.7.4-1+xenial2 [143
kB]
Fetched 143 kB in 0s (364 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package python3.7-tk:amd64.
(Reading database ... 256375 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../python3.7-tk_3.7.4-1+xenial2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking python3.7-tk:amd64 (3.7.4-1+xenial2) ...
Setting up python3.7-tk:amd64 (3.7.4-1+xenial2) ...

After installing it, all good.

$ python3
Python 3.7.4 (default, Sep  2 2019, 20:44:09)
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import tkinter
>>> exit()

Answer 6

On CentOS 6.5 with python 2.7 I needed to do: yum install python27-tkinter