VS Code: Failed to find a kernelspec to use for ipykernel launch

Question

I've been doing lessons on the site Kaggle recently, and decided to try downloading some of the notebooks (also called Kaggle kernels) from the lessons to Visual Studio Code so I could complete them offline. (Here's an example of one of the exercises I downloaded, if needed: https://www.kaggle.com/jackdmoran/exercise-missing-values/edit)

However, as soon as I try to run blocks of code within these notebooks, I am given the error message "Failed to find a kernelspec to use for ipykernel launch", and nothing happens. I tried updating Python and setting a Python interpreter since VS Code wanted me to do that, but no dice. The same error still occurs. If I have already updated and set up Python on VS Code, what should I try next?

(Also, I know that a similar question was asked recently, but the asker got no response and their question was slightly different from my down, so I figured I should try asking anyway. If this question is still inappropriate in spite of that, just let me know and I'll take it down!)

Answer 1

You need to check whether you have installed ipython and ipykernel with the command pip list.

Then try to reinstall or upgrade it with command:

pip install ipython
pip install ipykernel

or

pip install --upgrade ipython
pip install --upgrade ipykernel