Getting help

PowerShell used to come bundled with help documentation. If you've worked with *nix systems, it's similar to the man page.

Starting with PowerShell v3, however, the help files/system were not installed with PowerShell. One of the chronic problems with a help system that comes bundled with an application is that the contents get outdated right away. Applications are continuously being patched, improved, and changed, and thus the documentation needs to be updated. You will need to consciously download and install the help files when you are ready.

Once ready, run PowerShell as an administrator and just type in the following command:

Update-Help

This will connect you to a Microsoft server to download the most recent version of PowerShell help:

When you need to look for syntaxes or examples from the help system, you can use Get-Help and then the cmdlet name. For example, if you want to get ChildItem, you can use the following command:

Get-Help Get-ChildItem

Other switches available for Get-Help that you might find useful are as follows:

Sometimes you may prefer to open the local help system in a different window, in which case you can use the following command:

Get-Help Get-ChildItem -ShowWindow

The result is shown in the following screenshot:

Having the help document in a different window allows you to do simultaneous tasks, that is, write your script and refer to the syntaxes and examples. The help window also allows for searching and highlighting keywords.

If what you prefer is to view the help online and get the most recent version to date, you can use the following command instead:

Get-Help Get-ChildItem -Online

This will open the corresponding Microsoft TechNet entry in your default browser:

Get-Command –Name "*Log*"

$message = "Hello World!"
$message | Get-Member