>> Hello, everyone. I'm instructor Gerri Roberts
and this is PowerShell Scripting.
In this video, we're going to learn
about some additional help items.
We're going to learn about the About Library,
the ShowWindow command,
and the Show-Command command.
First of all, the About library.
PowerShell actually has a very robust About Library,
and according to Microsoft,
these are topics that cover a ranges
of concepts about PowerShell.
Basically, these are help files that help
the user understand some concepts within PowerShell.
The output you get from the about files is pretty similar
to the -full switch that we did
with the help commands a couple of videos ago.
It's more robust than normal help files.
For example, if we wanted to
get information about environment variables,
we would use the Get-Help space and then list
the about file which is about_Environment_Variables.
Now, something to notice.
The about files will always start with about _,
so whatever you're looking up will start with about_.
Now, the command here will bring up
the about file for our environment variables,
which you can see in the picture over here,
we piped it to
a text file so you can look at the information.
Now, in some cases,
it might be easier to pipe to a text file so
you could sit there and read it or have it for later.
In other cases, you can go ahead and just
put it on your PowerShell window and read through it.
Now, if you want to see all of
the about files that are available,
you can type Get-Help space about_ and wildcard.
This will find all of the about files by using
about_ and a wildcard to
find any files that start with about_.
Now, remember, all those files
for the about files are about_.
Or if you don't want to look in PowerShell,
you can find them on the Microsoft Docs website.
If you go to the Microsoft Docs PowerShell website
and look up about files,
you'll be able to find the article that lists
all those files or you can try typing
this entire URL into
your browser and you'll be able to find it that way.
Now, notice this is another
en-us if you are in a different country.
Easiest way to find it is to go
to the Microsoft Docs website,
type in PowerShell,
and then when you find the PowerShell page,
search for about file on the PowerShell page.
Another useful item is the ShowWindow Command.
-ShowWindow is actually a switch parameter and it moves
the output from the current to
another one windows to make it easier to read.
For example here, we did
get-help about_aliases and then
we did the perimeter for ShowWindow,
and instead of showing
all that information in the current window,
it pops up another window to make it easier to read.
It also gives you the bonus of having a search feature,
which if you look at the top
of the ShowWindow window you can see find.
If you start typing in something,
it will look for it just like you could
find it in a Word document or another item
and you'll also be able to
scroll through using previous and next if
it finds more than one result for your search.
Another useful command, the -Show-Command.
This is very useful because it
allows you to pop up a command into
a graphical window so you
can work with it a little
bit easier than just typing it out.
When that pops up instead
of having it look like the ShowWindow,
it's actually information about the command.
So you have a bunch of tabs,
each tab is a perimeter for that command.
Any command parameter that is required,
so any of those that have to be
done are marked with an asterisk.
Any changes that you make in this window,
you can run into
your regular PowerShell window
by clicking Run at the bottom.
You can also copy any of these changes by using copy at
the bottom and that will copy
your information into the clipboard
so you can look at it later.
Updating help. Things do
change from time to time so you
may have to update your help files.
In order to do this,
there's a couple of things.
If you're online, it's very simple,
you just type update help,
it'll run for a few minutes and it'll pull
all the different changes from online
for the Microsoft server and update for you.
If you are offline,
unfortunately it's a little more complicated.
What you have to do is you have to go to
another computer that is updated,
use the save-help command to save them to a drive or
removable media so that saves
all the updates to
something you could bring to the other computer.
Then when you get to the other computer
and you put it in the media,
you have to run update help with a source
path parameter pointing to that media that you have,
and what it'll do is it'll sink the files from
that media to your computer to update your help.
Post-assessment time.
If you wanted to move the output of a command to
another window to make it easier to read,
which switch parameter would you use?
Would you togglewindow,
ShowWindow, Show-Command or Show?
I'll give you a minute to go ahead and think about it.
It would actually be ShowWindow.
Now, ShowWindow moves the output of
a command to another windows and make it easier to read.
Now, remember, Show-Command moves the command
itself to another window
and shows you the parameters for that command.
That's why you would choose ShowWindow.