The document outlines a presentation on PowerShell basics tailored for Office apps and servers, particularly focusing on SharePoint functionalities. It covers the history of PowerShell, its core features, usage in SharePoint Online and On-Premises, as well as automation techniques for Office applications. Additionally, it includes guidance on accessing resources and ongoing community support for further learning.

1. PowerShell Basics for
Office Apps & Servers
Greg McMurray
SharePoint Saturday Utah
February 2019

2. Thank You SPSUtah 2019 Sponsors!
PLATINUM
• Lucidworks
• ZAACT
GOLD
• JourneyTEAM
• Sovereign SP
SILVER
• SkySync
ShareSki & SharePint

3. Intro – Greg
• Experience in Aerospace, Branding & Marketing,
Energy, Healthcare, Software
• Currently Senior Software Engineer at WECC
• Co-Founder of Aritus Computer Services, L.L.C.
• President of SharePoint / Office 365
and Dynamics 365 User Groups
• Find me online:
- @goyuix
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/goyuix
- https://stackoverflow.com/cv/goyuix
( top 2% of users )

4. Pluralsight IQ
https://www.pluralsight.com/product/skill-iq

5. Agenda
•PowerShell History & Basics
•SharePoint Online
•SharePoint PnP Library
•SharePoint On-Premises
•Office Apps Automation
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

6. In the beginning
We needed a shell

7. Not that kind
of shell . . .

8. Our forebears: CSH
• Hey look! A C-Shell
• We are getting closer
• Created by Bill Joy as a graduate student
at UC Berkeley in the late 1970s
• “reads commands from a file … supports
filename wildcarding, piping, here
documents, command substitution,
variables and control structures for
condition-testing and iteration” – C-Shell,
Wikipedia
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

9. PowerShell Origin Story:
Monad & Manifesto
• Monad: Term coined by Leibniz to represent a fundamental
unit of existence, that are combined and composed into for
a purpose
• PowerShell paper in 2002 states: “provide a powerful,
consistent, intuitive, extensible and useful set of tools”
• Game changer: Piping objects instead of text

10. PowerShell Versions
• 1.0: for XP, Vista and Server 2003
• 2.0: included in Win 7 & Server 2008
• 3.0: included in Win 8 & Server 2012
• 4.0: included in Win 8.1 & Server 2012 R2
• 5.0/5.1: include in Win 10 & Server 2016
• 6.0: Becomes PowerShell Core

11. PowerShell Basics - cmdlets
•Verb-Noun Syntax
• Examples:
• Get-Help
• Get-Command
• Get-Member
• about* pages

12. PowerShell Basics - Variables
• Variables are labels that hold values
• Start with a dollar sign
• Values have types
• A bunch of special variables exist:
$ENV, $_, $error, etc.

13. PowerShell Basics - Piping
• The pipe character: |
•Quite literally “pipes” output from
the left side to the right as input
• Reminder: Everything is an object,
might be a string, or something else

14. PowerShell Basics - Control
•if () { } else {}
• do { } while ()
• foreach ($item in $stuff) {}
• $stuff | ForEach-Object { $_ }

15. SharePoint Online Management Shell
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/sharepoint/sharepoint-
online/connect-sharepoint-online?view=sharepoint-ps
• https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Microsoft.Online.Share
Point.PowerShell/
• Remember PowerShell needs elevated / admin permissions
• Install: Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell
• Verify: Get-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell
• Notes: You may need to update NuGet and trust the Gallery

16. PowerShell - SPO
$email = 'admin@tenant.com’
$url = 'https://tenant-admin.sharepoint.com'
$cred = Get-Credential $email
Connect-SPOService -Url $url -Credential $cred
• Note: If MFA is enabled, just omit the credential parameter and you
will be prompted through the authentication process

17. SharePoint Patterns and Practices (PnP)
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/sharepoint/sharepoint-
pnp/sharepoint-pnp-cmdlets?view=sharepoint-ps
• “Perform complex provisioning and artifact management”
• Uses Client Side Object Model (CSOM)
• Three different versions:
• Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline
• Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShell2016
• Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShell2013

18. PowerShell - PnP
$url = 'https://your-tenant.sharepoint.com'
$cred = Get-Credential admin@tenant.com
Connect-PnPOnline –Url $url –Credentials $cred
$list = Get-PnPList /Lists/MyCustomList
Set-PnPList –Identity $list –Hidden $true
• Note: If MFA is enabled, change -Credential to -UseWebLogin

19. On-Premises SharePoint
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/sharepoint-
server/?view=sharepoint-ps
• Uses the SharePoint .NET API
• Must be run on servers that are part of your on-premises farm

20. PowerShell – On-Premises
# $Host.Runspace.ThreadOptions = "ReuseThread"
# Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
$url = 'https://your-farm.domain.local’
$site = Get-SPSite $url
$site.AllWebs | Select-Object Title,Url
Note: You may need to uncomment the first two lines if you are running the
script outside of the SharePoint Management Shell (it auto-includes them)

21. Office Apps Automation
• Work with your data and surface it in applications
• A few different approaches are available
• COM / .NET API
• Office OpenXML
• How would you like to work with this data?

22. PowerShell – Word Automation
# Must have Office installed, bad for servers
$word = New-Object -ComObject word.application
$word.Visible = $true
$word.Documents.Add()

23. PowerShell – Excel Automation
# https://github.com/dfinke/ImportExcel
Install-Module -Name ImportExcel
Get-Process | Export-Excel

24. Learning More
• Microsoft and the community have TONS of resources
• Weekly YouTube calls for PnP work
• Channel 9, docs.microsoft.com
• Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning / Lynda.com, Udemy, others
• Let’s chat: What do you want to build?
• Contact Me: @goyuix or linkedin.com/in/goyuix
• Github: https://github.com/goyuix/presentations/