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On Preferences and Scopes

April 1, 2022 Apr 1, 2022 04/1/22
James O'Neill
Progress in PowerShell: a tale of Verbosity and other preferences with lessons in Scopes and Proxies thrown in It started, as these things often do, with someone complaining. In PowerShell Version 7.2 the output of and look like this: In all the earlier versions they look like the version below, which is more helpful when you're trying ...

How to Preview PowerShell Scripts In PowerShell

December 13, 2021 Dec 13, 2021 12/13/21
@DoctorDNS
Q: When I use Windows Explorer and select a PowerShell script file - I do not see the script in the preview window. Can I fix that? A: You can make a few simple registry updates and do just what you want! At some time in the deep and distant past, Windows Explorer gained the preview pane feature. The idea is simple: you select a file in ...

How to Use $PSDefaultParameterValues

December 7, 2021 Dec 7, 2021 12/7/21
@DoctorDNS
Q: When I use cmdlets like and , how do I change default values of the Keep and Wrap parameters? A: Use the automatic variable. When I first discovered PowerShell's background jobs feature, I would use to view job output - only to discover it's no longer there. And almost too often to count, I pipe objects to cmdlet only to get truncated...

How to Use $FormatEnumerationLimit

November 5, 2021 Nov 5, 2021 11/5/21
@DoctorDNS
Q: When I format an object where a property contains more than 4 objects, I never see the extra property values. How can I fix that? A: Use the variable. This query is one I hear in many PowerShell support forums, and I have encountered this issue a lot over the years. What happens is that you issue a command to return objects, for example...

How to use the Secret modules

October 25, 2021 Oct 25, 2021 10/25/21
@DoctorDNS
Q: I have a bunch of scripts we use in production that make use of Windows credentials. In some cases, these scripts have an actual password in plain text, while others read the password from an XML file. Is there a better way? A: Scripts with high-privilege account passwords in plain text is not a good idea. There are several methods you can...