The Get-Help cmdlet displays information about PowerShell concepts and commands, including cmdlets, functions, CIM commands, workflows, providers, aliases and scripts.

To get help for a PowerShell command, type Get-Help followed by the command name, such as: Get-Help Get-Process.

Conceptual help topics in PowerShell begin with "about_", such as "about_Comparison_Operators". To see all "about_" topics, type Get-Help about_*. To see a particular topic, type Get-Help about_<topic-name>, such as Get-Help about_Comparison_Operators.

To get help for a PowerShell provider, type Get-Help followed by the provider name. For example, to get help for the Certificate provider, type Get-Help Certificate.

In addition to Get-Help, you can also type help or man, which displays one screen of text at a time, or <cmdlet-name> -?, which is identical to Get-Help but works only for commands.

Get-Help gets the help content that it displays from help files on your computer. Without the help files, Get-Help displays only basic information about commands. Some PowerShell modules come with help files. However, starting in Windows PowerShell 3.0, the modules that come with the Windows operating system do not include help files. To download or update the help files for a module in Windows PowerShell 3.0, use the Update-Help cmdlet.

Display basic information about a command

These commands display basic information about the Format-Table cmdlet.

Get-Help Format-Table
Get-Help -Name Format-Table
Format-Table -?

Display basic information one page at a time

These commands display basic information about the Format-Table cmdlet one page at a time. The help is a function that runs Get-Help cmdlet internally and displays the result one page at a time. The man is an alias for the help function.

help Format-Table
man Format-Table
Get-Help Format-Table | Out-Host -Paging

Display more information for a cmdlet

The Detailed parameter displays the detailed view of the help topic, which includes parameter descriptions and examples. The Full parameter displays the full view of the help topic, which includes parameter descriptions, examples, input and output object types, and additional notes.

PS>Get-Help Format-Table -Detailed
PS>Get-Help Format-Table -Full

Display selected parts of a cmdlet by using parameters

These commands display selected parts of the Format-Table cmdlet help.

Get-Help Format-Table -Examples
Get-Help Format-Table -Parameter GroupBy
Get-Help Format-Table -Parameter *

Display online version of help

This command displays the online version of the help topic for the Format-Table cmdlet in your default web browser.

PS>Get-Help Format-Table -Online

Display help about the help system and available help topics

  
 PS>Get-Help 
 PS>Get-Help * 
  

Display a list of topics that include a word

This command displays a list of topics that include the word remoting.

PS>Get-Help remoting