Windows PowerShell is a cross-platform task automation shell and scripting language built on .NET, designed to help IT professionals and developers control and automate Windows systems and applications. Unlike traditional command-line tools that exchange plain text, PowerShell passes structured .NET objects through its pipeline, making it possible to filter, sort, and manipulate data with precision that plain-text shells cannot match. Every major Windows workload — from Active Directory and Azure to SQL Server and Exchange — ships PowerShell modules, so mastering the language pays dividends across virtually every sysadmin or DevOps scenario. PowerShell 7 (the open-source successor to Windows PowerShell 5.1) runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and adds modern operators, parallel execution, and improved error handling that further accelerate automation.
What This Cheat Sheet Covers
This topic spans 15 focused tables and 138 indexed concepts. Below is a complete table-by-table outline of this topic, spanning foundational concepts through advanced details.
Table 1: Core Discovery Cmdlets
Three cmdlets form PowerShell's built-in help system: Get-Help explains what a cmdlet does, Get-Command discovers what is installed, and Get-Member reveals the properties and methods any object exposes. Running these three commands is always the right starting point when exploring an unfamiliar cmdlet or working with unknown output types.
| Cmdlet | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
Get-Help Get-Process -Full | • Displays full documentation for any cmdlet, including parameters, examples, and notes • alias -? works for cmdlets only | |
Update-Help -Force | • Downloads the latest help files from the internet • required on fresh installs where help content is absent | |
Get-Command -Verb Get -Noun Process | • Lists all installed commands (cmdlets, functions, scripts, aliases) • filter by noun, verb, or module | |
Get-Process <code>|</code> Get-Member | • Lists every property and method of the objects in the pipeline • essential for discovering object structure |