Get-Help: Command to View PowerShell Help Documentation

In this tutorial, we will learn how to use the Get-Help cmdlet to find help in Windows PowerShell. We can use the Get-Help cmdlet to:

View help documentation (man pages) of PowerShell commands.
Find other PowerShell commands that match specific search terms.

When you give the exact name of a command, it will show the help documentation of that command. Or if you provide a keyword, Get-Help will find PowerShell commands that match the keyword.

For Example, The command Get-Help Get-Service shows the help page of the Get-Service command, while the Get-Help service will list all PowerShell commands with the word service in their name.

It is a simple command, and the best way to learn is to look at some examples.

Examples

When you run the Get-Help without any options, it shows general information about the PowerShell help system:

get-help

The following command shows a summary view of the help file of the Get-Service command—the summary view induces command syntax and a short description:

get-help Get-Service

Use the -Examples parameter to show examples of how to use a particular command:

Get-Help Get-Service -Examples

To display more information, use the -Detailed parameter:

Get-Help Get-Service -Detailed

The detailed view includes examples as well as details about all parameters. You can view the complete help documentation by adding the -Full parameter:

Get-Help Get-Service -Full

When you use the -Online parameter, it opens a web browser and displays the online version of the help file:

Get-Help Get-Service -Online

An important parameter is the -Parameter which you can use to get details on specific or all parameters of a PowerShell command:

Get-Help Get-Service -Parameter *

In the above example, we used an asterisk (*) as the argument to list all parameters of the Get-Service command. We can also provide a specific parameter to view the details of that parameter only:

Get-Help Get-Service -Parameter DisplayName

For more information, you can refer to the help file of the Get-Help command:

Get-Help Get-Help -Full

Using Get-Help To Find Commands

We can use Get-Help to find other commands. For example, the following command list commands that have the letters 'service' anywhere in their name:

Get-Help service

The following screenshot shows the output of the above command:

In the following example, we use an asterisk (*) at the end of the search string. It will list all commands that start with the word get:

Get-Help get*

This command does the opposite. It will list all PowerShell commands that end with the letters 'get':

Get-Help *get

Notes

If your search string matches only one command, Get-Help will show the help file of that command instead of showing a list. For example, running Get-Help html will show the man page of the ConvertTo-Html cmdlet if it is the only cmdlet that matches the search term html.

The Get-Help command supports several different views. The default is the summary view, which includes a command syntax and a short description.

The following table lists the supported views and their corresponding command switch.

-Examples	Shows examples of how to use the command.
-Parameter *	Lists all parameters supported by the command.
-Detailed	Shows a detailed view of the help page with examples and parameters.
-Full	Displays the complete documentation.
-Online	Open a web browser and show the online version of the help file.

More Examples

List commands that have "ipaddress" anywhere in the name:

Get-Help *ipaddress*

Show examples for the Get-NetIPAddress command:

Get-Help Get-NetIPAddress -Examples

List all supported parameters of the Get-NetIPAddress command with a detailed description:

Get-Help Get-NetIPAddress -Parameter *

The following command shows a detailed description of the -InterfaceIndex parameter:

Get-Help Get-NetIPAddress -Parameter InterfaceIndex

The following command shows a detailed view of the help file—it will include examples and parameters:

Get-Help Get-Help -Detailed

What Next?

This is the end of this tutorial. By now, you should be familiar with how to use the Get-Help cmdlet to access help documentation.

Next, we will learn how to use the Get-Command cmdlet to list PowerShell Commands.