Visual Studio Code terminal doesn’t activate Conda environment

I read this Stack Overflow post on a similar issue, but the suggestions there don’t seem to be working. I installed Visual Studio Code on my Windows machine and added the Python extension. Then I changed the Python path for my project to C:Usersusername.condaenvstompython.exe. The .vscode/settings.json has this in it:

{
    "python.pythonPath": "C:\Users\username\.conda\envs\tom\python.exe"
}

The status bar in Visual Studio Code also shows:

But when I do conda env list even after doing conda activate tom in the terminal I get the output:

# conda environments:
#
base                  *  C:ProgramDataAnaconda3
tom                      C:Usersusername.condaenvstom

Instead of:

# conda environments:
#
base                     C:ProgramDataAnaconda3
tom                   *  C:Usersusername.condaenvstom

Also the packages not installed in base don’t get imported when I try python app.py. What should I do?

where python runs, but it doesn’t give any output.

Also,

import os
import sys
os.path.dirname(sys.executable)

gives

'C:\Python38'

Answer

First, open the Anaconda prompt (How to access Anaconda command prompt in Windows 10 (64-bit)), and type:

conda activate tom

To activate your virtual environment.

Then to open Visual Studio Code in this active environment, type

code

And it should work.