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The last thing I want to show you is how to use and

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access the about topics in PowerShell.

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They're a very useful tool for getting information about how PowerShell works.

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Let's say that you want to know about aliases in PowerShell.

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So you can ask PowerShell, hey, help with alias as the text you're looking for.

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You could put it in wild cards if you want, and we get our listing there.

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I can see that there are two about topics there at the end.

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Let's look at that about_Aliases.

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So to help about_Aliases, and this now brings up the help topic.

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Help topics generally follow this format.

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There'll be a short description, think of it like a synopsis, if you will.

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Then there'll be a longer description, and you can page through,

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and you may see additional subheadings like BUILT‑IN ALIASES here,

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and ALIAS CMDLETS, and so on,

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but there's lots of information here that you can scroll through

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and read to learn about a particular topic,

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such as aliases, or switches, or if statements,

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or all sorts of things that you can find in PowerShell.

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If you scroll all the way through to the end, you'll see some links there.

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Now they're links only in the sense that you can do help about_profiles,

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or _providers, or the command list here,

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so you do help New‑Alias, if you want to see how to create a new alias.

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All the about topics all start with about_,

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and then if you want to see all of them,

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let's just put in a wildcard there,

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and as you install additional modules or install other products,

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you might get additional about topics,

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so your list may vary from what I have here,

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but you can see there's lots of topics there that you can go through,

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and you can read about and learn lots of things about PowerShell.

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Now remember,

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I showed you a little bit ago the ShowWindow, this also works for

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the about topics, may not always pop up. So here is the about topic,

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it makes it a little bit easier sometimes to read, again you can

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scroll through and look at this.

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You may occasionally see some texts that's a little garbled or mangled,

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again there's really nothing you can do about that.

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That's just an artifact from the help file itself.

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Alright, so let's close that. That is kind of a quick look at the about topics.

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One thing about the about topics I'll show you here is that

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they are, Tab completion does work for them.

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So if I do help about_S, and now hit Tab,

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it will cycle through and show me all of the about topics. So that can also be a

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helpful little trick in your PowerShell tool belt. Alright,

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I think that gives us a good handle on using the help system,

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updating it, finding help using the help function, or get help, the about topics. Let's go back to the slides and wrap up this module.