Newsletter Archives
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Why PowerShell?
ISSUE 20.29 • 2023-07-17 WINDOWS
By Bruce Kriebel
For nearly 50 years, we’ve all been using the commands that originated from MS-DOS command line interpreter (CLI).
This wasn’t a bad thing. Even when Windows came along, Microsoft provided a means to get to the CLI (the program cmd.exe) and continued to flesh out its capabilities. I’ll bet nearly everyone reading this has written a simple batch file using those commands.
But there’s a better alternative.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.29.0, 2023-07-17).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter. -
Using PowerShell to manage Word documents
MICROSOFT 365
By Peter Deegan
PowerShell for Word document management? Yes, of course. That’s something the plain old command prompt can’t handle.
The more-complex and more-capable PowerShell can open Office apps (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) to automate the making or editing of documents, sheets, or decks. Command prompt can do basic file management only. (As a little bonus, this article lists the DOS commands that still work in PowerShell.)
The point of this article is to provide an “entry level” script for performing a basic document-management task. So let’s go through a PowerShell script that can deal with a Word document, while showing off some clever PowerShell commands.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.34.0, 2022-08-22).
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How to access Microsoft 365 from PowerShell
MICROSOFT 365
By Peter Deegan
PowerShell can be daunting at first, no doubt about that. But it can be very useful and sometimes essential for managing Microsoft 365, so I’ll explain how to use PowerShell from the very start.
From the Microsoft 365 Web dashboard, it is difficult (and sometimes impossible) to make certain changes. Only PowerShell can make them, but the online help makes a lot of assumptions and isn’t easy for beginners to understand.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.25.0, 2022-06-20).
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Win10 version 1803 shoots PowerShell dropdown list
I’m still amazed at how many bugs are floating around.
If you’re in the Windows Insider program, I recommend that you look at Thomas G’s feedback and vote it up:
When using commands, PowerShell no longer shows a list of suggestions of commands (dropdown list).
It just shows a . below the command as if it’s unable to open the list.
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If you’ve used the Windows command line,or ever futzed with a BAT file, you’re ready to learn PowerShell
Amazingly powerful and easy to catch on.