{"id":7599,"date":"2020-07-17T15:17:53","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T19:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/?p=7599"},"modified":"2020-07-17T15:17:59","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T19:17:59","slug":"updating-powershell-about-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/powershell\/7599\/updating-powershell-about-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Updating PowerShell About Help"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During some recent work, I realized my new Windows PowerShell 5.1 installs are missing the About help topics. Apparently, this is a known issue, although I don't think it gets a lot of attention. Microsoft is working on improving updateable help for PowerShell 7 which I think will also have a beneficial change for Windows PowerShell. Microsoft has in fact been updating the about topics. All of the help files are open source on GitHub at https:\/\/github.com\/MicrosoftDocs\/PowerShell-Docs\/tree\/staging\/reference.<\/a> I use the about topics often, so I wrote a PowerShell script to download and install the latest About topics from GitHub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Download-PSAboutHelp.ps1<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The script runs cross platform, although I haven't tested it with PowerShell 6.x. It needs to be run from an elevated session on for Windows PowerShell. The script requires the Platyps module which will be installed if it isn't already. The script does not require git or a GitHub account, although it does rely on the GitHub APIs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The script can be saved from this Github gist.<\/p>\n\n\n