I am a new user of PyCharm, but have years of experience with MacOS, python and similar. My set up is MacBook Pro M1, 32GB ram, MacOS Sequoia 15.2, and PyCharm Pro latest.
Path to projects leads to an external SSD via usb-c. I have set up some projects, each using python 3.12 in a venv.
The projects work for a while then “lose” a module (module not found). I have gone through every troubleshooting method the built-in AI and web search have come up with.
The first module to disappear is docx2txt. I created a new project and it worked, for a couple of days then the error returned. The docx2txt module could not be found working within or outside of PyCharm. In site-packages there is no “docx2txt” folder, only an “info” folder containing WHEEL and its companions.
For the most recent disappearance, I noticed the package used distutils. I cloned the docx2txt project from GitHub and updated setup.py to use setup tools instead of distutils, and installed it. Python invoked from the command line can import it, but not from PyCharm. When I run the project from PyCharm, the interpreter cannot find dotenv.
I have lost days of work time at this point so I am a bit worried. Advice on what to look at and for would be great.