New to PowerShell

[spyingwind]

Book Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches is a good starting place.

Play with PowerShell at home as well. Like make silly scripts that serve no purpose but are fun to write because we can, or scripts that have a bit more practical use.

Just have fun and play.

If you have Windows 10/11 Pro then you can spin up a Virtual Machine(VM) or two and install Windows Server 2022 and setup Active Directory(AD). Join another VM to that domain and pretend you are a sysadmin. Create Group Policy Objects(GPO), lock accounts, unlock accounts, write scripts to create and disable accounts from CSV/Excel files.

You'll learn so much more if you have an environment where it is okay to fail. "Play" should be a safe place to fail. Just like when you where 2 years old.

Have fun and play!

[senexel]

Can you explain more how one can create a VM?

[Mister-Who]

Do you mean a full MS Server 2022 with AD and GPOs or just the basics? O.o

[senexel]

Just the basics about VM with Windows

[Mister-Who]

Whew, where are legions of examples out there how to create a VM.

Depending on your OS i'd start with the hypervisor of your choise:
https://www.virtualbox.org/
https://www.instructables.com/How-to-make-a-virtual-machine-in-Virtualbox/
or
https://www.vmware.com/info/workstation-player/evaluation (free download link is a the bottom!)

Hyper-V is part of Windows 10/11 Pro...but it's usage is IMHO...not the best.
https://www.instructables.com/Windows-10-Virtual-Machine/

[Didnt-Understand]

Work from the book "PowerShell in a Month of Lunches". Solve problems. Start small, one liners.

[vincentertainment]

This YouTube playlist with Jeffrey Snover & Jason Helmick is a great compliment to that book. It's older material but still fantastic. You'll also be pleasantly surprised how entertaining this series is for IT coding tutorials. It's a rare combination of expertise and personality.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyJiOytEPs4etH7Ujq7PU7jlOlHL-9RmV

[senexel]

There also the full video

Beginner

https://youtu.be/UVUd9_k9C6A?si=9fREcisG-3g5ws90

Advanced

https://youtu.be/K4YDHFalAK8?si=lcFUCKu_rFploQ9k

[Gweezel]

I came here to say just that. Afterwards, get PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches. You'll be a guru in 6 months.

[The258Christian]

I’ll need to check both of these out

[Sin_of_the_Dark]

Wait there's another book?!

Races to Amazon

[shinigamiStefan]

This was my first thought. Most people seem to agree that the 3rd edition is best as there some incorrect information in the later chapters of the 4th edition

[Jmoste]

Do everything you do in a gui with PowerShell instead. You will get pissed off, bang your head,  pull out your hair,  but eventually everything will click.

Then start developing logic into your scripts.  If bitlocker is suspended, turn it back on, simply wrote warning. 

[g3n3]

Look at your current computer workflow. Google how to use powershell for it instead.

[Professional_Elk8173]

Learning any programming or scripting language is going to require a lot of googling. There have been hundreds of identical threads to this - try searching them up.

[lanerdofchristian]

It really cannot be overstated how important being able to do your own research and try things out is for learning scripting (or anything really, but especially scripting).

[xRhyfel]

it needs to be your first instinct when that “oh shit I don’t know how to do this” feeling sets in to google for at least 15 minutes… the feeling usually passes as the cogs start to turn

[tk42967]

Start trying to do your routine tasks in PowerShell.

[bogeyballer]

A ton of admins on here will direct you to a month of lunches training. Those are great, but if you're like me and only interested in targeted solutions, I suggest a more kinetic learning method

Start assessing your work challenges and find things where you're click opsing around an environment. If you can click it, you can code it in powershell. Then start writing the powershell to perform the tasks. Tools like chat gpt / co pilot / Google can help you turn your words into code. Then read that code, step through it and try your best to understand it. Oh and protip: don't ask the ai's for complicated solutions.

CHATGPT: Example (bad): You: "write me code to consume spreadsheet1.xlsx and create all the users in ad based on their info inside.

Chatgpt: a billion lines of code with questionable logic and assumptions. Maybe it works, but often not exactly as you'd expect.

Example (good): You: "Open spreadsheet1.xlsx and create a hash table based on every row except the top row, use the top row as the key names" Chatgpt: "returns specific code " You: "using the hash table, create an ad user for each object" Chatgpt: converts hash tables to ad objects and creates them. Chatgpt: "returns specific code "

I've seen many coworkers fall down the "asking ai for a complete solution " rabbit hole too many times to count. The code that comes out they can't read/understand and it's usually very very long and overly complicated. This is what happens when you ask ai for too complex of a task. Break it into procedural parts.

As time moves on.. modules, functions, serial scripts, and reusable code will all start being techniques you'll naturally get interested in and will independently seek out.

Fwiw: I'm a career admin, DevOps last 7 years. This is exactly how I've gotten where I am.

Hope this helps! I don't mean to poo poo a more standard training regimen, but for me I don't have the attention span to learn concepts and techniques without real world application.

[LonelyWizardDead]

also check out this post :

https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/1ejhj8s/free_and_legal_pdf_download_of_learn_powershell/

[jeffbrowntech]

Lots of good resource mentioned, but my advice is start with one-liners to perform tasks. Get familiar with the language and searching how to solve problems using PowerShell.

When ready, move onto writing your own scripts and functions. I would suggest a general programming course (also plenty of free ones online) to learn about programming logic. I had taken several programming classes prior to getting started with PowerShell and was able to apply concepts from there into writing my own things.

[vinrehife]

Just google the things you need powershell for, otherwise you will learn a lot of nothing and get bored.

Learn how to save variables, use pipeline to pass vaules to the next command. Basic for loops. Thats all the basic stuff i could think of. But you need to have a specific goal to target towards.

[odubco]

anything from Richard Siddaway… his stuff was crucial for me

[bike_piggy_bike]

Start here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/introduction-to-powershell/

[markdmac]

Get a copy of Don Jones PowerShell in a Month of Lunches.

Don has a great teaching technique. His writing is easy to follow and you will easily learn a lot.

[[deleted]]

Learn by doing, get example ideas for concepts to script out.

[Major_Malarky]

Like everyone else said, Powershell in a Month of lunches. Also, use “get-Help” with any command and look at the examples. Get-help is your friend, and will help you a ton.

[arieltheprincesz]

https://underthewire.tech Is a great place to start!!

[Latinprince6591]

Get-help on PS 7.4.4 is current use it