Years ago I blogged about how I like to use the SSMS scripting feature to learn how to do things. Well now I’m starting to learn Powershell and it turns out there is a GUI here as well that will help me learn to script. At least in a very basic way. For example, if I want to see what parameters are actually available for Get-Help and maybe script out a template to work with then I can do this:

Show-Command Get-Help

Each tab (AllUsersView, DetailedView, Examples etc) is a different set of parameters and will not work together. So you have to pick a tab and stick with it. The first problem I’m running into is that I don’t know what the various parameters mean. I’m going to hit that help button on the top right.

Now I have the window version of the help screen. Which if you look closely at tab list you’ll see is an option for the help command. I can now scroll down and see what my various options are. I’m going to go to the Show-Window tab and pull up the help for the Show-Command cmdlet (inception anyone?).

And then if I hit the Copy button I get the command with the parameters (no abbreviations or aliases) put into the clipboard.

Get-Help -ShowWindow -Name Show-Command

-ShowWindow brings up that nice little window for the help.
-Name is the name of the command I want.

I can of course also just hit the Run button and run the command, but that kind of ruins the purpose of it in my opinion.

Last but not least if I want to see the list of possible Common Parameters I can hit the down arrow at the bottom and expand them. I’m going to check Verbose.

And now when I hit copy I get this:

Get-Help -ShowWindow -Name Show-Command -Verbose

Pretty cool right? This will probably be my most used command over the next few months.