Have you ever wondered how to update the PowerShell help system? Wondered how to update it more than once in a 24 hour period? Needed to update the help file of a system not connected to the internet? Well I am going to show you how.
Whenever I jump onto any new server the first thing I do is check what PowerShell version is on the box via $psversiontable or Get-Host. Then I usually would ask the Windows Admins to upgrade to the latest version.
The second thing which I do is update the Help system. In version 2.0 this involves downloading the latest Help file. In PowerShell 3.0 they have made it super easy and all you have to do is run the command update-help
You will then get the below screen running whilst update runs.
This can be run once every 24 hours but if you do have a need to update more frequently you will need to run the below command.
update-help -Force
Whilst this seems easy this is only good for those Servers which are connected to the internet. If you are looking to do it on a Server which is not connected to the internet then you will need to use the save-help command. This saves a copy of the help file which can be copied to other servers.
Save-Help -Force -DestinationPath C:PS
Please note I only used the -Force command for illustration purposes as I wanted to do the update more than twice in a 24 hour period for the purposes of this article.
Originally published at https://parvtheitgeek.com on February 2, 2014.
Parv The IT Geek 