When you download PowerShell help via Update-Help, there was a bug in PowerShell 5 that might be fixed by now: text-based help files had the extension “.txt” rather than “.help.txt”, so PowerShell help would ignore them. Check for yourself – the command below should return tons of about topics:
PS C:\> Get-Help about* Name Category Module Synopsis ---- -------- ------ -------- about_Aliases HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Arithmetic_Operators HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Arrays HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Assignment_Operators HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Automatic_Variables HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Break HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Classes HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Command_Precedence HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Command_Syntax HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Comment_Based_Help HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_CommonParameters HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Comparison_Operators HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Continue HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Core_Commands HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Data_Sections HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_Debuggers HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION about_DesiredStateConfiguration HelpFile SHORT DESCRIPTION
If it does not, you either never ran Update-Help to download the help files in the first place, or you are bitten by the bug.
Whether or not this bug is fixed meanwhile, with PowerShell you can correct these things easily. Here is a script that would fix the file extension for all affected help files.
This script does require Administrator privileges because help files reside inside the protected Windows folder:
# find all text files inside the PowerShell folder that start # with "about" Get-ChildItem -Path $pshome -Filter about*.txt -Recurse | # identify those that do not end with ".help.txt" Where-Object { $_.Name -notlike '*.help.txt' } | # rename the extension using a regex: Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\.txt$', '.help.txt'}
