powertips

Classic foreach loops are the fastest loop available but they come with a severe limitation. Foreach loops do not support streaming. You need to...

There are many ways to create a list of network drives. One involves a COM interface that was used by VBScript as well, and we’ll pick it to...

You can always use Send-MailMessage to send a mail via any SMTP server. If you’d like to use your Outlook client, though, i.e. to keep access...

Polishing raw text is not always trivial, and when you’d like to make sure names or texts are well-formed, and each word starts with a capital...

Every Windows installation has a unique UUID that you can use to distinguish machines. While computer names can change, the UUID won’t: PS>...

In the previous tip we illustrated how Get-Date can take a format string and convert DateTime values to strings. The string conversion always uses...

Formatting date and time to your needs is easy with the -Format parameter provided by Get-Date. You can use it either with the current date, or...

In the previous tip we created the function Out-PDFFile which accepts any PowerShell results and turns them into a PDF file – using the built-in...

In the previous tip we explained how you can use PowerShell on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 to set up a PDF printer that prints anything to a...

In the previous tip we illustrated how you can use the built-in “Microsoft Print to PDF” printer to send PowerShell output to PDF files. However,...

Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 finally come with a built-in PDF printer called “Microsoft Print to PDF” that you can use from...

Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 come with extensive printer support thanks to the PrintManagement module. If you’d like to print official...

In the previous tip we introduced the FileSystemWatcher and illustrated how it can miss filesystem changes when your handler code takes too long. To...

A FileSystemWatcher can monitor a file or folder for changes, so your PowerShell code can immediately be notified when new files are copied to a...

Here is another file system task that sounds worse than it actually is. Let’s say you need to remove all folders below a given level in a...

If you’d like to respond to new event log entries in real time, here is how your PowerShell code can be notified the moment a new event entry...

With Get-EventLog, you can easily dump the content for any given event log, however if you’d like to directly access a given event log, you...

In PowerShell, to measure time, you can simply subtract datetime values from another: $Start = Get-Date $null = Read-Host -Prompt "Press ENTER...

Lines like $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition can be useful to determine the folder in which the current script is stored, i.e. to access other...

Here is a piece of PowerShell code that connects to the local firewall and dumps the open firewall ports: $firewall = New-object -ComObject...

In the previous tip we implemented a timeout using PowerShell background jobs so you could set a maximum time some code was allowed to run before it...

If you’d like to make sure some code won’t execute forever, you can use background jobs to implement a timeout. Here is a sample...