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Creating a SharePoint 2013 PowerShell Help Document with Examples

Added by Spike Xavier September 9, 2015

All of this was done inside of the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell running as Administrator in my test and development environment. Do Not Try In Production.

(For instructor-led SharePoint 2013 training, see our course schedule)

I first ran the following command in order to get all the SharePoint Commandlets into the variable:

$com

$com = Get-Command “*-SP*”

1	$com = Get-Command “-SP”

I then typed $com into the shell and it wrote a list of all the SharePoint commandlets to the host screen!

Next I looped through the collection and got the help documentation including examples for each commandlet and wrote it out to a txt file using the –NoClobber (don’t overwrite) and the –Append (add to the file flags to create a text file of all the SharePoint Commandlets including their help documentation and examples using this line:

foreach($s in $com){help $s.Name –Examples | Out-File max.txt –NoClobber –Append}

1	foreach($s in $com){help $s.Name –Examples \| Out-File max.txt –NoClobber –Append}

(I typed it all on one line in the shell)

I then typed:

Notepad max.txt

1	Notepad max.txt

And there it was in all its glory, my own personal detailed, comprehensive help file!

My help file is almost 800 pages when I pasted it into Microsoft Word 2013!!

I will keep both the .docx as well as the .txt versions, one for readability and one for copy pasting.

I will be working on outing it to html or xml and creating a JQuery site with the results, but that’s another blog post.

Creating a SharePoint 2013 PowerShell Help Document with Examples