Jupyter is not recognized

Jupyter is not recognized

Sometimes, when you install Jupyter on Windows, you might encounter an error saying

'jupyter is not recognized as an internal or external command

This happens because the command prompt is not able to identify where your Jupyter installation is. Where exactly does the command prompt search for Jupyter ? It depends on your path variable. Try running the following on your command prompt.

> echo %PATH%

It emits a bunch of paths.

What you are looking for is something like the text highlighted in red box above. If you don’t have …\Python3x\Scripts anywhere, then this means that your command prompt is not able to look at your Python Scripts folder (where your Jupyter scripts are located).

Typically, this happens because, when you installed Python, you didn’t ask the installer to add Python to your path. But, luckily, we can add this later as well. For example, Python is typically installed on the user’s folder (when done for specific users and not for all users on the computer ) at

C:\Users\<user name>\Appdata\Roaming\Python

Go to that folder on your windows explorer and copy the path to Scripts. It should look something like this.

C:\Users\AjayTech\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python37\Scripts

Once you got that, go to Windows Start and start searching for “environment”. A simple “env” should bring this up.

It should take you here. Click on “Environment variables”

Once inside, you should see the PATH variable. Select it and click on edit.

Click on New and add the path you have previously located for the Python scripts.

That’s it. Restart your command prompt and all your python scripts should run directly on the command prompt anywhere.

PS : Also, make sure that your jupyter scripts are there in the Python Scripts folder. A proper installation of Jupyter via pip should have ensured this.

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