5 PowerShell Commands Every IT Beginner Should Know

To those who are new to IT, want to break into IT, or are curious about PowerShell in general, this is for you.

These five beginner-friendly commands will allow you to navigate the Windows file system, inspect your system processes, and make you think like a system administrator.

Before I get started, one thing to note is PowerShell uses a verb-noun syntax. This means that typically PowerShell will use cmdlets (pronounced command-let) with a verb first noun second. It will become more apparent how this works the more you use PowerShell.

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1. Get-Command

This command does what it sounds like, it gets commands. It’s useful for when you generally know what you want to do, but don’t know what the command name is yet.

Common Get-Command use cases are:

Get-Command *Service*
Get-Command *Process*

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2. Get-Help

This is probably one of the most useful commands you will ever use. The Get-Help cmdlet will literally get you help.

For instance, running the command:

Get-Help Get-Process

will tell you what the command Get-Process does, give you correct syntax, show available parameters, and provide notes about the command.

There is also the -Detailed parameter:

Get-Help Get-Process -Detailed

This provides additional information and examples.

Here are some examples of Get-Help:

Get-Help Get-Command
Get-Help Get-Command -Detailed
Get-Help Get-Command -Full
Get-Help Get-Command -Examples

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3. Get-Location

Next up is Get-Location. This cmdlet lets you know where you are in the Windows file system.

Get-Location

As you can see after typing the command it lets me know I’m in:

C:\Users\zachariah\Desktop\test

Why would this be important?

Well, when writing PowerShell scripts or executing commands there may be context to where you are currently located.

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4. Get-ChildItem

This cmdlet displays the files and folders in a directory.

If you have familiarity with Linux you may remember using ls, and for Windows Command Prompt you may remember dir.

Get-ChildItem

It’s pretty straightforward and super useful when you want to know what exactly is contained inside of a directory.

And here’s a freebie cmdlet:

Get-Content

Once you’re looking inside a directory and want to see what’s inside of a text document rather than a folder, Get-Content becomes useful.

Get-Content notes.txt

Again, if you’re familiar with Linux, you’re probably thinking of the cat command. This is PowerShell’s equivalent.

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5. Set-Location

Here’s the last cmdlet on the list.

PowerShell, like Linux’s bash shell, is heavily dependent on file system location and navigation.

For instance, if I were to run:

Get-ChildItem

while in:

C:\

I’m going to get all of the directories in my root drive.

But if I’m looking for a particular file in my Desktop folder, then running Get-ChildItem from the C drive will not show me the information I’m looking for.

Set-Location Desktop

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Final Thoughts

Learning PowerShell seems intimidating, and at times it will feel terrible trying to practice new cmdlets and write scripts, but over time you will get more comfortable using PowerShell.

Something else is that the more you try to use PowerShell in your day-to-day work — even if you do not need to — the more you will start to see how useful PowerShell actually is.