ImportError: the 'read_file' function requires the 'fiona' package, but it is not installed or does not import correctly. Importing fiona resulted in:

Question

Trying to read a shapefile (.shp) and received an ImportError after executing the below line of code. I even pip installed GDAL, geopandas, fiona and shapely before executing the below code.

shapefile = gpd.read_file(r'C:\Users\....\Data Analysis\shapefiles\louisville.shp')

Error received is as follows,

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-164-16243badadbe> in <module>
----> 1 shapefile = gpd.read_file(r'C:\Users\....\Data Analysis\shapefiles\louisville.shp')

~\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\geopandas\io\file.py in _read_file(filename, bbox, mask, rows, **kwargs)
    164     by using the encoding keyword parameter, e.g. ``encoding='utf-8'``.
    165     """
--> 166     _check_fiona("'read_file' function")
    167     filename = _expand_user(filename)
    168 

~\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\geopandas\io\file.py in _check_fiona(func)
     78 def _check_fiona(func):
     79     if fiona is None:
---> 80         raise ImportError(
     81             f"the {func} requires the 'fiona' package, but it is not installed or does "
     82             f"not import correctly.\nImporting fiona resulted in: {fiona_import_error}"

ImportError: the 'read_file' function requires the 'fiona' package, but it is not installed or does not import correctly.
Importing fiona resulted in: DLL load failed while importing ogrext: The specified procedure could not be found.

Answer 1

Apparently, I was using below versions of GDAL and fiona combinations which didn't work for me.

GDAL-3.3.2-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl

Fiona-1.8.20-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl

I had to uninstall the above versions and install the below versions instead. This resolved the issue.

GDAL-3.2.3-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl

Fiona‑1.8.19‑cp38‑cp38‑win_amd64.whl