PowerShell Commands for Beginners: The Ones You'll Actually Use

You don't need to learn hundreds of cmdlets. A small set covers most of what you'll do in your first months. Here they are, grouped by what you're trying to do.

Look around

Get-Location shows where you are. Get-ChildItem lists what's in the folder (aliases: ls, dir). Set-Location moves you (alias: cd).

Get-Location
Get-ChildItem C:\Users
Set-Location C:\Temp

Work with files

New-Item creates files and folders, Copy-Item and Move-Item do what they say, and Remove-Item deletes. Get-Content reads a file, Set-Content writes one.

New-Item notes.txt -ItemType File
Copy-Item notes.txt backup.txt
Get-Content notes.txt

Filter and sort

Most PowerShell work is pulling something out of a list. Where-Object keeps rows that match, Sort-Object orders them, Select-Object picks columns or the first few.

Get-Process | Where-Object CPU -gt 100 | Sort-Object CPU -Descending | Select-Object -First 5

Search text

Select-String is PowerShell's grep. Point it at a file and give it a pattern.

Select-String -Path app.log -Pattern 'error'

When you're stuck

Get-Help explains any cmdlet, and Get-Command finds one when you only remember part of the name.

Get-Help Get-ChildItem -Examples
Get-Command *service*

Practice it for real. shellreps has hands-on PowerShell labs that run in your browser, no install. The first one is free, no signup. The terminal mimics PowerShell syntax so the habits carry over, though it isn't Microsoft's PowerShell itself.

Try the free lab →