Hi Kristin,
Sorry for answering slowly… Taking care of a sick toddler this week.
I thought that this would fix it, but it seems that it didn’t? I have also encountered the matplotlib import error, and
conda activate fenicsproject
conda install matplotlib
fixed it for me. Matplotlib is not installed during conda install fenics, because it seems that the fenics conda package does not list matplotlib as a dependency.
Surprisingly, it seems that this is the case. If you follow the instructions in my Jupyter Notebook removing the --yes option from each conda command, I think you’ll see that matplotlib is not among the list of packages to be installed during the conda install fenics step.
I’m not sure why you get package conflicts when trying to install matplotlib, but one thing you might try is creating a fresh environment and installing matplotlib before fenics, e.g. using
conda create -n fenicsproject python=3.8 matplotlib
conda activate fenicsproject
conda install fenics
Due to my limitations as a mortal being, I’m unable to debug conda package conflicts, but if you send me the output of conda list from your fenicsproject environment (maybe as a personal message, so as not to bore other readers), I can compare package versions with my installation to see if I can figure out where the conflict is.