PowerShell Team

Automating the world one-liner at a time…

Cmdlet Help Editor is now released on CodePlex

I published the source code for the Cmdlet Help Editor on CodePlex here: http://cmdlethelpeditor.codeplex.com/ . Please feel free to contribute. for more information on the Cmdlet Help Editor, please check out the following post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2007/09/01/new-and-improved-cmdlet-help-editor-tool.aspx  ...

Keeping Help Helpful: Use -Online and Redirectable Links

When you refer to Windows PowerShell help topics, such as in tools and blog posts, be sure to refer to the most recent version of the help topics. Few things are less helpful or more confusing than sending a reader to a topic that is missing a parameter or includes an example that doesn't work. To be sure ...

Windows PowerShell in Bing Visual Search

Beginning today, there's a new way to look at Windows PowerShell cmdlets. You're used to looking at them this way: (image) Or, perhaps, this way: (image) But would you like to look at them this way? (image) What if getting a list of the remoting cmdlets was as easy as clicking a category name? And you could filter to display only the ...

URLs for PowerShell Core Help Topics

Several Windows PowerShell online help fans have requested a list of all of the URLs of Windows PowerShell Core online help topics in the TechNet Library. I'm providing them here so that they're available to everyone.   The file includes URLs for the current Windows PowerShell Core conceptual ("about"), cmdlet, and provider help, ...

Function Help Cannot Share a Cmdlet Help File

In Windows PowerShell 2.0, you can write help topics for functions, scripts, and modules, just as you do for cmdlets and providers. In fact, as a best practice, you should always include help topics for all shared PowerShell items.  And we make it easy. For functions and scripts, you can write comment-based help topics right in the ...

Adding Custom Cmdlet Help for Providers

A new feature of Windows PowerShell 2.0 lets you write custom cmdlet help for Windows PowerShell providers. This blog explains how to do it. (The topic will also be covered in excruciating detail in MSDN, but we don't want you to wait.)   What's a Provider? A Windows PowerShell provider is a C# program that exposes a data store to Windows...

Adding your own help links to ISE

ISE has an F1 help feature, where if you press F1 when your caret is over a cmdlet name, context sensitive help opens. Shay Levy has a nice post on F1 help in the ISE herehttp://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/scriptfanatic/archive/2009/01/31/using-help-in-powershell-ise.aspxHe adds “I wanted to mimic the way ISE’s help works when you press F1...

Get-Help Can't Find My Help File!

(or How to Define the Help File Name in a Custom Windows PowerShell Snap-in)   We've discovered an error in our instructions for creating a custom Windows PowerShell snap-in. This error prevents Get-Help from finding the help files for cmdlets in the snap-in. We'd like to come clean about our mistake and to warn you about the effects of ...