{"id":7691,"date":"2015-02-22T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2015\/02\/22\/weekend-scripter-fun-things-to-do-with-powershell\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:30:32","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T17:30:32","slug":"weekend-scripter-fun-things-to-do-with-powershell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/weekend-scripter-fun-things-to-do-with-powershell\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Scripter: Fun Things to Do with PowerShell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Summary<\/strong><span style=\"font-size:12px\">: Windows PowerShell MVP, Teresa Wilson, talks about fun things to do with Windows PowerShell.<\/span>\nMicrosoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Today we have a guest blog post from Microsoft Honorary Scripting Guy and Windows PowerShell MVP, Teresa Wilson, who shares some fun things to do with Windows PowerShell.&nbsp;Take it away, Teresa&hellip;\nHello everyone,\nSometimes when I am out and about, people will ask me what I do and where I work. It is easy to explain when you are talking to an IT professional, but to explain it to the general public is not so easy. I usually give a pretty simple explanation of how to use a Windows PowerShell script to read a spreadsheet with new employee names and departments and to create new users when you hire a group of people. When I&#8217;m working with an IT pro who has never used Windows PowerShell, it is pretty easy to show the idea of reading log files and setting up scheduled tasks with a script.\nThe first thing that you need to remember is to use the right tool for the job. Windows PowerShell is not always the right tool, but when it is, it is well worth the time and effort to create a script to automate the task. Today, I thought I could take it a step further and give some examples that also include the script. I hope you think that the examples are useful.\nFirst, I went to the Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog and looked for the most viewed blog posts to see if there was a common theme or idea. I came up with this: <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.technet.comhttps:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/list-files-in-folders-and-subfolders-with-powershell\/\" title=\"List Files in Folders and subfolders with PowerShell\" target=\"_blank\">List Files in Folders and subfolders with PowerShell<\/a>. This blog post and its VBScript script version were&nbsp;two of the most viewed. That tells me that listing files in folders and subfolders is a popular task that you can perform with Windows PowerShell.\nNext, I went to the <a href=\"https:\/\/gallery.technet.microsoft.com\/scriptcenter\" title=\"Script Repository\" target=\"_blank\">Script Repository<\/a>&nbsp;and found some interesting popular items.\nThe <a href=\"https:\/\/gallery.technet.microsoft.com\/scriptcenter\/2d191bcd-3308-4edd-9de2-88dff796b0bc\" title=\"Windows Update PowerShell Module\" target=\"_blank\">Windows Update PowerShell Module<\/a> by MVP, Michal Gajda, has been downloaded more than 112,000 times. I am an accounting person, so that number tells me that this blog post is popular.\nOne of the great things about Windows PowerShell is how you can change your scripts as time goes by. One&nbsp;popular item that has taken advantage of this capability is the updated and improved version of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/gallery.technet.microsoft.com\/scriptcenter\/PowerShell-Create-Active-7e6a3978\" title=\"Create Active Directory Users Based On Excel Input\" target=\"_blank\">Create Active Directory Users Based On Excel Input<\/a>. You know that I had to include this blog post&mdash;especially because it is close to my generic example of what you can do with Windows PowerShell.\nThese are only two of the more than 5,000 Windows PowerShell entries in the Script Repository.\nNew and exciting is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.powershellgallery.com\/\" title=\"PowerShell Gallery\" target=\"_blank\">PowerShell Gallery<\/a>. After you go to the Home page, be sure to click the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.powershellgallery.com\/pages\/GettingStarted\" title=\"Get Started\" target=\"_blank\"> Get Started<\/a> tab because there is a lot of information there. I am not going to reinvent the wheel by restating the words that you will find there.\nThat is all I have today. Hope you have a wonderful day.\n~Teresa\nI invite you to follow me on <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/scriptingguystwitter\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/scriptingguysfacebook\">Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.technet.commailto:scripter@microsoft.com\" target=\"_blank\">scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/scriptingforum\" target=\"_blank\">Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n<p><b>Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary: Windows PowerShell MVP, Teresa Wilson, talks about fun things to do with Windows PowerShell. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Today we have a guest blog post from Microsoft Honorary Scripting Guy and Windows PowerShell MVP, Teresa Wilson, who shares some fun things to do with Windows PowerShell.&nbsp;Take it away, Teresa&hellip; Hello everyone, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51,56,3,337,61,45],"class_list":["post-7691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-getting-started","tag-guest-blogger","tag-scripting-guy","tag-teresa-wilson","tag-weekend-scripter","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Summary: Windows PowerShell MVP, Teresa Wilson, talks about fun things to do with Windows PowerShell. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Today we have a guest blog post from Microsoft Honorary Scripting Guy and Windows PowerShell MVP, Teresa Wilson, who shares some fun things to do with Windows PowerShell.&nbsp;Take it away, Teresa&hellip; Hello everyone, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}