PowerShell Tip: Create a PowerShell Profile

A PowerShell profile is a PowerShell script that runs automatically when a new PowerShell session is started. PowerShell profiles can be used to configure your PowerShell environment the way you like it, or to load custom functions for use in your PowerShell administration tasks.

There are actually six PowerShell profiles relating to the PowerShell console and the PowerShell ISE. You can see the four console-related profiles by running the following command:

PS C:\Users\Paul> $profile | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | fl name,definition
Name       : AllUsersAllHosts
Definition : System.String AllUsersAllHosts=C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\profile.ps1
Name       : AllUsersCurrentHost
Definition : System.String
             AllUsersCurrentHost=C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
Name       : CurrentUserAllHosts
Definition : System.String CurrentUserAllHosts=C:\Users\Paul\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1
Name       : CurrentUserCurrentHost
Definition : System.String
             CurrentUserCurrentHost=C:\Users\Paul\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

The two additional ISE-related profiles are:

• Current User, Current Host – ISE: $Home\[My ]Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShellISE_profile.ps1
• All Users, Current Host – ISE: $PsHome\Microsoft.PowerShellISE_profile.ps1

For the purposes of this article I will be referring to the Current User, Current Host profile.

You can check for an existing PowerShell profile by using Test-Path.

PS C:\> Test-Path $profile
False

If there is no existing profile create one with New-Item.

PS C:\> New-Item $profile -ItemType File -Force
    Directory: C:\Users\Paul\Documents\WindowsPowerShell
Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name
----                -------------     ------ ----
-a---        29/09/2014   2:30 PM          0 Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

You can now edit the profile script using the PowerShell ISE or your PowerShell editor of choice and add custom functions and any other customizations that you require for your PowerShell console sessions.

PS C:\> powershell_ise.exe $profile

Examples:

• PowerShell Function to Connect to Office 365

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