powertips

To improve readability, you can break PowerShell lines into separate lines. Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.Status -eq 'Running' }...

With a simple trick, you can add a dialog window that helps users to provide the function parameters for your function. Simply use...

To display text information, you can of course launch notepad.exe, and use the editor to display the text. Displaying text in an editor is not such...

If your script takes some time to complete, you may want to play a system sound file. Here is a sample illustrating how this can be done: # find...

Many file extensions are associated with executables. You can then use Invoke-Item to open a document with this executable. Finding out just which...

To split a text at each uppercase letter, without having to provide a list of uppercase characters, try this example: $text =...

If you'd like to find uppercase characters, you could use regular expressions. However, you would then provide a list of uppercase characters to...

In a previous tip you have seen that the PowerShell console supports all characters available in a TrueType font. You just need to convert the...

Did you know that console output can contain special icons like checkmarks? All you need to do is set the console to a TrueType font like...

When you call a function, PowerShell increases the nest level. When a function calls another function, or script, this will again increase the nest...

Sometimes you might want to abort a pipeline when a certain condition is met. Here is a creative way of doing this. It works all the way back to...

When you use the "Continue" statement inside a loop, you can skip the remainder of this loop iteration, and continue with the next....

To get a rough understanding how much memory a script takes, or how much memory PowerShell puts aside when you store results in a variable, here is...

When you use variables inside a script block, the variables are evaluated when you run the script block. To lock variable content, you can create a...

Mutually exclusive parameters in PowerShell functions use the "ParameterSetName" attribute to assign parameters to different parameter...

Sometimes, PowerShell functions have parameters that should be mutually exclusive: the user should only be able to use either one, not both. To...

If you'd like to create your own color-coded PowerShell scripts, for example formatting them in HTML, here is a sample that gets you started....

If you know beforehand how many results you expect from a pipeline, you can use Select-Object to stop the upstream cmdlets. This can save a lot of...

If a function returns more than one value, PowerShell wraps them in an array. However, if you pass the results to another function inside a...

One feedback we got on a previous tip directed us to "Carbon", a free PowerShell module crammed with useful PowerShell functions. One is...

PowerShell can easily create CSV files using Export-Csv, and if Microsoft Excel is installed on your system, PowerShell can then have Excel convert...

Provided you have Administrator privileges, you can use a simple WMI class to check whether someone is accessing your resources via the network:...

Are you tired of Windows unexpectedly rebooting, just because some newly installed updates required a reboot? Like most things, you can control the...

You may know that each string object has a method called Trim() that trims away whitespace both from the beginning and end of a string: $text =...

Here is a quick script illustrating how a PowerShell script can send back a numeric status code to the caller: $exitcode = 123 $p = Start-Process...

Occasionally, there are misunderstandings how "exit" works. Take this example: function abc { 'Start' exit 100 'Done' }...

Do you know off-hand what "break", "continue", "return", and "exit" do? These are powerful language...

Here is a quick and easy way to find NTFS permissions that are potentially dangerous. The script tests all folders in $pathsToCheck and reports any...

Would you like to know where a public IP address is located? Provided you have Internet access, you can query one of the public information...

Here is a quick way to get all IP addresses assigned to your computer: #requires -Version 1 $ipaddress = [System.Net.DNS]::GetHostByName($null)...