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A commonly asked question here is: “How Do I Learn PowerShell?”. This sticky post presents common responses to that question with pointers to more details. Please read this post, and look at the resources before you ask questions in the forum as they might help to get you started with PowerShell! If there are missing great references, then please comment below - I add all good ones.

How do you learn best?

This a key question to learning most things. Since there are several ways of learning PowerShell, the ‘right’ way.is by using the modality that suits you best. Here are some key learning modalities to help you learn Powershell:

1. Instructor-led Training

Microsoft has three official courses that you can get at any Microsoft Official Learning partner**.** These are:

Numerous third-party training courses exist - I teach PowerShell across Europe and do so at an accelerated pace compared to the MS courses. (see Labcenter - IT på nätet ). There are other local courses you can find if you look.

2. Book Learning
Many people learn from reading books One of the best books on PowerShell is Don Jones Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches. For more information on this book, see Amazon.co.uk Keen-eyed readers may note the similarity between this book and the MS training courses. That is intentional as Don Jones and his team wrote both courses.

An e-book to look at is Conversational PowerShell:

3. Video Training

Some folks learn well by watching videos. There are several recommendations here:

Pluralsight - Pluralsight has a large range of PowerShell related videos covering both the basics and the more advanced topics (e.g. using CIM cmdlets, implementing PowerShell Web Access, etc. generally ). These are commercial offerings but not overly expensive.

Microsoft Virtual Academy - these are free videos from Miicrosoft that feature outstanding presenters. These include:

Don Jones’ Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches
This is a set of videos to accompany the book. You can use them on their own. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6D474E721138865A

Plataan TV
Windows PowerShell 101 - a free video course introducing PowerShell.
https://plataan.tv/en/plataan/training-course/windows/windows-powershell-101

4. From the community

Many people learn by reading posts here as well as by asking questions and answering questions in this amazing Spiceworks community. The Group Admins and others are a wealth of information and can provide a huge range of tips and tricks. Ask questions here - and have a go at answering them too.

And of course, there are other communities! But why would you want to go anywhere else?

5. Podcasts

Hal Rottenberg and Jonathan Walz have been running The PowerScripting Podcast for years. Always entertaining and always educational. Tune in at https://powershell.org/podcast/

Going Further

PowerShell is a vast subject, here are some resources for additional learning:

Advanced tools and Scripting with PowerShell 3.00 Jump Start - Another Microsoft video with Jeffrey Snover - Advanced Tools & Scripting with PowerShell 3.0 Jump Start | Microsoft Learn

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Great resources, tfl. Bookmarking this for later when others ask the question.

Everyone else: don’t let tfl’s humbleness fool you, he is a PowerShell instructor and Pluralsight trainer (among many of his other credits). He is an invaluable resource here in the Spiceworks community.

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Microsoft’s Powershell Gateway:

Rob’s link for Free Powershell Ebooks:

More from Rob, Using Powershell to manipulate Active Directory:

And I like this post from Matt on using Pester for PS testing:

Pitfalls/Quirks. While PS is very powerful it does have quirks, here’s a good list:

Powershell Modules Central: GitHub - ClaudioESSilva/PowerShellModulesCentral: Central repository with existing PowerShell modules and links to blog posts/videos that talk about or use them

“This repository was founded as a central hub to a list of PowerShell modules that people know/use. Each module has a file describing its name, basic information the module, as well as one or more blog posts/videos from people that have written about or used them.”

Use a good editor: Visual Studio Code is one on the best: https://code.visualstudio.com/ (it’s free too).

More fun with VSCode: https://vscodecandothat.com/ (some very useful suggestions.)

edit: added modules bit 2018-02-22

edit2: VSCode stuff bit 2018-05-16

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Great post… seems the question of “how do i learn” is asked more often than any other question (aside from which Cert do I go for…)

nice to see it all in one central place that will hopefully be utilized

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Thank you for posting this! I’m just starting out with Powershell and this is a great consolidated list of learning resources.

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FYI: Don Jones just released a free ebook entitled “Conversational PowerShell” which details how to go about learning PowerShell. This might be a good read for those getting started.

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great post

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The book you posted looked a little old. This one seemed newer. If I’m understanding this wrong please feel free to correct me.

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I’ll update the sticky to point to this newer edition.

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I have added this to the sticky post - thanks!

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Great Post.

If you like Podcasts, Jon Walz and Hal Rottenberg have been producing the PowerScripting Podcast since version one, both are Microsoft MVP’s. They have well over 300 episodes that cover all aspects of PowerShell from the basics thru DSC, Nano Server and many other PowerShell subjects.

They can be found at https://powershell.org/podcast/ as well as in the iTunes Store and the Windows Store.

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Good idea - I’d not thought of adding the podcasts. However - I am not sure folks learn from a pod cast inititally. The idea of the sticky was for a new to PowerShell person. Or do you think there is value for a PowerShell newbie in the pod casts?

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Everyone learns differently. I’d add them.

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Done.

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New suggestion for a link: How to become a PowerShell Pro - v2 | Microsoft Learn Lots of good info and it was recently updated.

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Thanks reading powershell in a month of lunches now.

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This is a great post. It does duplicate a lot of what I’ve added in the stickly, so I won’t add it as such. However, what I have done is to pull out some extra stuff that I have put into the sticky post. So thanks for the suggestion.

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I think that knowing how to google effectively will help you teach yourself just about any skill online.

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Google is a powerful tool for the IT Pro. But before you can Google effectively, you need to know what to google for.

On the downside, Google is not perfect. Searching today for stuff, I came across article after article that is old, out of date, related to an earlier version, or just plain wrong. And in a lot of cases, some of the results that are returned, while they may work, are hardly best practice. You have to know enough PowerShell to be able to validate the solution obtained and be able to adapt it to fit your need.

What I hope this sticky does is to help teach Spiceheads enough to make their Google searches a bit more fruitful (and less needed).

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Googling scripts also introduces other people’s crap code and horrid formatting into your scripts too. Sure, the script might get the job done but if you pass it as your own, you look foolish.