1 00:00:01,040 --> 00:00:01,930 On occasion, 2 00:00:01,930 --> 00:00:07,260 you may want to get information out of PowerShell onto an actual hard copy like, 3 00:00:07,260 --> 00:00:10,640 yeah, actual paper that comes out of a printer. 4 00:00:10,640 --> 00:00:11,590 You could, of course, 5 00:00:11,590 --> 00:00:16,440 output it to a file using Out‑File and then open that file and print it off. 6 00:00:16,440 --> 00:00:19,170 But PowerShell has a native command to send 7 00:00:19,170 --> 00:00:23,940 PowerShell data directly to a printer, and that command is Out‑Printer. 8 00:00:23,940 --> 00:00:25,940 Let's take a look. 9 00:00:25,940 --> 00:00:30,840 As usual, let's explore the help to see if there's anything of interest in here. 10 00:00:30,840 --> 00:00:35,740 So as we probably figured out, this command will send output to a printer. 11 00:00:35,740 --> 00:00:39,010 It looks like we can specify the name of the printer and also, 12 00:00:39,010 --> 00:00:40,940 as per all of the other out cmdlets, 13 00:00:40,940 --> 00:00:44,450 you can use the InputObject parameter to specify the data 14 00:00:44,450 --> 00:00:46,940 that this command is going to work with. 15 00:00:46,940 --> 00:00:48,550 Under the description here, 16 00:00:48,550 --> 00:00:51,940 you'll note it will send to the default printer if you don't specify a 17 00:00:51,940 --> 00:00:55,940 name or an alternate printer if you do specify the name. 18 00:00:55,940 --> 00:00:59,830 Now because I can't easily show you an actual piece of paper 19 00:00:59,830 --> 00:01:02,300 coming out of my printer in the office here, 20 00:01:02,300 --> 00:01:05,440 and I don't have that printer set up on this machine anyway, 21 00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:08,890 I'm going to use a printer that we'll save as a PDF file. 22 00:01:08,890 --> 00:01:13,040 But I just need you to use some imagination that instead of being a PDF file, 23 00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:16,640 that the text is actually being sent to a real printer. 24 00:01:16,640 --> 00:01:20,890 So I'll run Get‑Printer, and on this Windows 10 machine by default, 25 00:01:20,890 --> 00:01:23,880 there's a printer here named Microsoft Print to PDF. 26 00:01:23,880 --> 00:01:25,960 And if you haven't used this before, 27 00:01:25,960 --> 00:01:28,990 you can literally just print to it as if it were a physical printer, 28 00:01:28,990 --> 00:01:32,940 but it will allow you to save the document as a PDF file. 29 00:01:32,940 --> 00:01:38,180 Let's run our trusty Get‑Process and pipe that to Out‑Printer. And I'm not 30 00:01:38,180 --> 00:01:42,040 actually sure what my default printer currently is, so I'll use the name 31 00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:46,640 parameter to specify the Microsoft Print to PDF printer. 32 00:01:46,640 --> 00:01:50,370 If this were a physical printer, that would now simply start getting printed 33 00:01:50,370 --> 00:01:54,190 out on a sheet of paper. But I'm going to get a prompt you to save this as a 34 00:01:54,190 --> 00:01:59,620 PDF file. Let me drop it in the C docs folder, and I'll call the file 35 00:01:59,620 --> 00:02:05,460 process.pdf. If I open that folder in Windows Explorer and then I'll just 36 00:02:05,460 --> 00:02:10,510 open up the PDF file in Microsoft Edge here as I don't have a dedicated PDF 37 00:02:10,510 --> 00:02:14,340 reader on this machine, and there you have it. 38 00:02:14,340 --> 00:02:18,140 The default output of Get‑Process has been printed. 39 00:02:18,140 --> 00:02:20,900 If we go back to the PowerShell console briefly, 40 00:02:20,900 --> 00:02:22,280 I do want to mention that, 41 00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:26,260 as per the other Out cmdlets, you can format the data first. 42 00:02:26,260 --> 00:02:29,670 So if we wanted to print this as a list, we can pipe that across to 43 00:02:29,670 --> 00:02:33,940 format‑list first and then send that to Out‑Printer. 44 00:02:33,940 --> 00:02:44,000 I'll call this one process2.pdf, and then we can open that up. And sure enough this time, we do have a list view that's been printed off.