title: Installing a .whl Python package into a specific directory other than the default
body: <p>I am trying to install the 64-bit version of NTLK, which comes in a .whl file, in a different directory than the standard python34/Lib folder. I am using Windows 10 64-bit and Python 3.4 64-bit.</p>
  
  <p>I first tried using the instructions in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2915471/install-a-python-package-into-a-different-directory-using-pip">this question</a> (which worked for other modules).</p>
  
  <p>The command I typed into CMD was:</p>
  
  <pre><code>py -m pip install --install-option="--prefix=$PATH_NAME" nltk-3.0.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It promptly gave me the following error:</p>
  
  <p>UserWarning: Disabling all use of wheels due to the use of --build-options / --global-options / --install-options.</p>
  
  <p>It appears that I can't install WHL files using the --install-option. Is there an alternate way I can install the .whl package in a non default directory?</p>
  
  <p>Edit:  I marked this as solved because the proposed solution allows me to do what I need in my own use case. However, it doesn't completely answer the question due to inherent limitations in using <code>--root</code> to choose an alternate directory. There is technically no correct solution to this problem, see the answer's comments for details.</p>
  
  <p>Edit - March 3, 2017: It looks like this issue has been resolved in version 8.0 of PIP with the addition of the --prefix parameter. I've changed the accepted answer accordingly.</p>