How to access NLTK with different versions of Python

I started working with the NLTK 3.0 module for Python 2.7. I have recently shifted to Python 3.6. NLTK 3.0 is compatible with both.

When I try to import NLTK using Python 3.6 (in the IDLE integrated development environment), I get the error:

    import nltk
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'nltk'

My question: How do I make the NLTK module available to Python 3.6 without re-downloading the module?

I think it might be as easy as changing the locations of the NLTK files, is this correct?

This question is very similar to this off-topic question:

Python: how to get different versions of python to access the same modules?

except that, unlike scitools, NLTK is compatible with both Python 2.7 and Python 3.6.

Solution

It is compatible to both, but you still need to install it for your specific python version (I'm having this problem all the time; having packages installed for another python2.x whereas I thought I installed it for python3.x or the other way round). Usually, (if you're running python3.x now), doing something like

sudo pip3 install nltk

does the trick. By "without re-downloading the module", do you mean the nltk_data folder? I'm not sure, but think that is by default put in your home folder and can be shared between different python versions. And just doing a pip install shouldn't take too long/there's not that much to download I think.