I want to improve my PowerShell skills beyond the basics, but many resources I've found seem outdated. What books, courses, documentation, exercises, or learning methods would you recommend for studying modern PowerShell in 2026?
5 Answers
Make learning practical and fun: write scripts that rename files, process logs, generate reports, query directory services, or play simple games. Keep your snippets organized, comment what important lines do, and never run a script against production systems unless you understand its effects. A small lab environment is ideal for experimenting safely.
A very effective approach is to pick a real task you currently do manually and automate it. Start with something small, get a working script, then revisit it to improve error handling, readability, logging, performance, and parameter design. Studying existing scripts and figuring out why they work is useful too. Begin with PowerShell 7+ when possible, while still learning the differences between PowerShell 7 and Windows PowerShell 5.1.
For a guided introduction, the PowerShell in a Month of Lunches material is still a solid starting point, and Don Jones’s short lesson format is easy to follow. There are also structured training platforms with virtual labs if you prefer hands-on exercises. PSKoans is a good option once you know some programming and want practice solving small problems.
AI assistants can help explain errors, create quizzes, or turn a task into step-by-step exercises, but they shouldn’t replace understanding the code. Write or review the solution yourself, ask why each command works, and test everything in a lab. Blindly pasting generated scripts is risky, especially for administration and automation.
The Microsoft PowerShell documentation is still one of the best references. Get comfortable with Get-Command, Get-Help, Show-Command, and Update-Help. These let you discover commands, inspect parameters, read examples, and update local help content. Books such as Windows PowerShell in Action are also useful for understanding the language and its object-based pipeline.
Show-Command is especially handy for commands with many parameter sets because it provides a visual reference and can build a command from the selected options. Just keep in mind that it’s Windows-only.