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In PowerShell 3.0, when a parameter expects a fixed list of values, you do not need to write the complete argument. It is OK to write just as much...

Ever wanted to check whether a given user account and password was correct? Here is a little function that can help you: function Test-ADCredential...

TimeSpan objects represent a given amount of time. They are incredibly useful when you calculate with dates or times because they can represent the...

Sometimes, native commands such as net.exe return cryptic error numbers instead of full error messages. Traditionally, you could use the following...

Thanks to Shay Levy from http://powershellmagazine.com for showing how to do this: here's a small function that returns the architecture an...

Often, you may need a list of strings and want to store it in a variable. The common coding practice is like this: $MachineType =...

With Invoke-WebRequest and Invoke-RestMethod, PowerShell 3.0 now has powerful support for downloading information from the Internet as well as...

Did you know that you can use the Help Window that comes with PowerShell 3.0 and display your own text information inside of it? What's even...

If you find yourself submitting the same value for a cmdlet parameter over and over again, then PowerShell 3.0 lets you set a default value. Once...

One common headache are non-matching braces or parentheses in PowerShell scripts. So when you write a script, it is recommended to align matching...

In a previous tip we illustrated that ISE code snippets (press CTRL+J to view them) are plain ps1xml-files that you can manage in File Explorer. By...

By default, the PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor loads code snippets automatically, and you can then select and insert any of these by pressing CTRL+J....

The PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor ships with a number of default code snippets that you can see (and insert) by pressing CTRL+J. Once you start to...

In a previous tip, we showed how you can use New-IseSnippet to add new code snippets to the ISE editor in PowerShell 3.0. These custom snippets stay...

The new PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor features a snippet menu that lets you easily insert predefined code snippets. Simply press CTRL+J to open the...

Whenever you need to assign multi-line text to a variable, you can use so-called here-string. This is a sample: $myCodeSnippet=@' function...

PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor creates collapsible regions automatically, so you can collapse a function body or an IF statement. In addition, you can...

Sometimes you may just be interested in the last couple of entries in a log file. Here’s a simple yet fast way of outputting only the last x lines...

In a previous tip we illustrated how you can use web services to retrieve information such as public holidays or the location of an IP address....

Whenever a machine is connected to the Internet, it gets a public IP address (typically assigned by the ISP), and this public IP address is not...

In PowerShell 3.0, WPF is a great (and easy) way of creating GUIs. If you have a touch-enabled machine, check out how easily you can open a drawing...

Whenever you change a file, the file system automatically updates the LastWriteTime property. If you'd like to change a file without leaving...

Ed Wilson from the Scripting Guys demonstrated how PowerShell can use free web services to find out holidays. You do need direct (non-proxy)...

Aliases are shortcuts for commands and useful in interactive PowerShell. Once you write scripts, however, you should no longer use aliases and...

Ever wondered how a website knew which country you are from? That's because there are IP address segments assigned to certain regions. And...

Get-Process can easily return the CPU load for each running process, but this information by itself is not very useful: Get-Process | Select-Object...

PowerShell 3.0 uses .NET Framework 4.x so it has WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) capabilities built-in. This way, it only takes a few lines of...

Often, when you start writing a PowerShell script, you use temporary (dirty) variable names that later you'd like to polish. Renaming script...

ISE 3.0 features automatic outlining, so structures like braces can be collapsed or expanded by clicking the small "+" or "-"...