powertips

You can run PowerShell code in any host, and Windows ships with powershell.exe and powershell_ise.exe. Many prefer the graphical ISE editor over the...

There may be the need to add additional information to command results. Maybe you get data from different machines and want to keep a reference...

Select-Object has a parameter called -First that accepts a number. It will then return only the first x elements. Sounds simple, and it is. This...

To insert a variable into a string, you probably know that you can use double quotes like this: $domain = $env:USERDOMAIN $username = $env:USERNAME...

PowerShell is not just an automation language but also an alternate user interface. If you do not like the graphical interface, educate PowerShell...

Comparison operators act like filters when applied to arrays. So any console command that outputs multiple text lines can be used with comparison...

When you launch an EXE file, PowerShell will happily start it, then continue and not care about it anymore: If you'd like to keep a handle to...

Beginning in PowerShell 3.0, there is a new automatic variable available called $PSScriptRoot. This variable previously was only available within...

You probably know that Set-AuthenticodeSignature can be used to digitally sign PowerShell scripts. But did you know that this cmdlet can sign...

When you use Where-Object to filter information by date or time, this works actually very well--provided you use the correct filtering format. Do...

When you develop PowerShell scripts in the PowerShell ISE editor, you should run the final tests in a clean environment, making sure that no...

Get-PfxCertificate can import digital certificates from a PFX file. However, it can only retrieve one certificate. So if your PFX file contains more...

When you try PowerShell Remoting, you may run into connection errors just because your machine name was not fully qualified. Kerberos authentication...

Let's assume you have created this function: function Test-Function { param ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $ServerPath ) "You selected...

You can use Get-PfxCertificate to load digital certificates from PFX files, and then use the certificate to sign script files, for example: $pfxpath...

PowerShell can read environment variables easily. This returns the current windows folder: $env:windir However, if you want to make permanent...

Typically, when you mark a function parameter as "mandatory", PowerShell will prompt the user when the user omits the parameter: function...

You may not be aware of this, but PowerShell uses a different decimal delimiter for input and output - which may cause confusions to script users....

If you need to test whether some information resembles a valid date format, here is a test function: function Test-Date { param (...

Windows 8 is the first operating system that comes with fully localized text-to-speech engines. So you can now have PowerShell speak (and curse) in...

When you assign something to a variable, you can enclose the expression in braces. This will also output the data. Have a look: $a = Get-Service ($a...

There are multiple ways how you can ping computers. Here is a simple approach that uses the traditional ping.exe but can be easily integrated into...

To catch a user’s attention, your script can easily play WAV sound files. Here is a simple function: function Play-Alarm { $path =...

There is a tiny .NET function called GetHostByName() that is vastly useful. It will look up a host name and return its current IP address:...

When a file is stored on a drive with NTFS file system, you can attach data streams to it to store hidden information. Here is a sample that hides...

Ever needed a new local administrator account for testing purposes? Provided you are already Administrator, and you opened a PowerShell with full...

Microsoft Excel is an example of a program that is not easy to launch directly: the path to Excel may be different, depending on Office version and...

Any file you download from the Internet or receive via email get marked by Windows as potentially unsafe. If the file contains executables or...

To exclude results that have empty properties, you can easily use Where-Object. For example, when you run Get-Hotfix, and you only want to see...