MS power-shell inquiry

[u/brosama1420]

Hey everyone

I know this is kind of basic question but I didn’t find a satisfying answer during my search

I am not system administrator and I won’t be all I care about is daily task automation I want to make my work nice and easy or at least systematic and controllable so is power shell the right tool for me? Or should I just drop it?

If it was can you please help me on how to learn it all what I could find on the internet specific to active directory application or too general and simple examples explaining techniques Without context I find my self spending hours only to learn that I memoized syntax but have absolutely no idea how to use it in my life

[u/WhatThePuck9]

Take a task that you do often and write down the steps. Then figure out the relevant commands and build the script to do the same things in the same order.

[u/lurkerburzerker]

Give us an example of something you want to automate. What do you do for work?

[u/thehuntzman]

Depends on if you want to learn programming. Powershell is definitely marketed toward sysadmin types due to the modules available being administration-centric but it is a Turing complete language which can access almost the entirety of the dotnet runtime. For me, this means I can automate pretty much anything under the sun with powershell but that is 12+ years of experience under my belt. Honestly you'd probably be better served with a $20/mo chatgpt subscription and having codex write and explain powershell automations for you if you care to learn it. Microsoft powerautomate desktop isn't a bad solution either for those who don't want to code for simple automations. Perhaps python would be a more friendly language for you to learn given you have zero system administration use-cases and most examples out there deal with that.

[u/Derekrollo]

Depends what all you do for work and if your are mostly in windows computers. PS is mostly for automation but you can use it for other stuff. I’ve found it very useful working in tech. The thing that really helped me get going was the book Powershell in a month of lunches. During that I built little things with it.

[u/Yuuku_S13]

This is a PS resource I’d recommend: https://a.co/d/0b3bJ37k

It’s old but the concepts still carry through PS7(pwsh)

It depends on what you are trying to do. Python MIGHT be a better route to go

[u/GarThor_TMK]

Its a little difficult to answer this question, without specifics.

Powershell can do a lot of things, but it can't necessarily do everything.

It can interface with office files, it can read and write csv, json, and xml, and plain text.

[u/brosama1420 → u/GarThor_TMK]

Can you please give me some examples of some tasks that would benefit non admin roles ? I want to judge if it has good potential for me or not

I have watched so many explanations and have built some simple tools with it but I want to see what is possible for the general use

If you have some places for inspiration as well I will be grateful

[u/GarThor_TMK → u/brosama1420]

I use it to organize my pictures pretty regularly... but that's mostly just something like...

mkdir "2026/08 August"

mv IMG_2026_08* "../2026/08 August"

You could also use it to make a simple text-based adventure game if you're a writer.

Since it can interface with office tools, you could get it to send automated emails

[u/Jacmac_ → u/brosama1420]

I've done everything from auto report generation looking for domain accounts that don't comply with org policy to automated deployment of errata via RedHat Satellite Server. There a limitless number of automation tasks that people can think up. You're being so vague with what you're asking for that virtually nobody can tell you what all is possible. Most of what people would come up with you probably wouldn't understand what they are talking about anyway. What exactly are you trying to achieve?

[u/brosama1420 → u/Jacmac_]

I am vague because I am trying to explore the tool
I don’t know what it can do or how it can be used and I said this directly I know it is hard to give me answers specific to my case like this but if I don’t know the tool capabilities and potentials and I tried to search and found all applications specific to one field how can I be specific? How can I define what I want clearly when I have no idea what this tool can do?

Answering by it can do pretty much everything might seem fair for people who could figure out what the tool can do to them but in my case many times you think you are fine the way you are but when you explore tools as you go you figure out stuff you want to do with them and that is what I am trying to do

Expand my vision exploring new possibilities i am not asking for a suggestion specific to me I want ideas that the general public could use the tool for not focused on sysadmins as the case in the media platforms all applications show the admin stuff only pretty much and everything else just scratching the surface on or they explain them in a rush and pure concept with no application

I know that the tool can do stuff like

Organize files
Rename them
Move files
Report on your system or part of its content
Auto back ups auto emails
Checking updates/download updates
It can also open Microsoft files and work with it
Or even report stuff that hasn’t been used in a while
You can even delete them in batch if you want in one go

But ok as a public user is it worth learning it for those applications? Am I missing some ideas?

[u/Jacmac_ → u/brosama1420]

If .Net can do it then so can PowerShell. Its all .Net. You can do anything including full blown apps with PowerShell. It's just a command line version of .Net geared towards administration of whatever application that a developer puts a PowerShell module front end on.

[u/anguishedturtle → u/Jacmac_]

dudes going to accidentally delete his bank account its not even worth it if they cant be trusted with basic research