PnP PowerShell overview

• 11/28/2017
• 31 minutes to read
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SharePoint Patterns and Practices (PnP) contains a library of PowerShell commands (PnP PowerShell) that allows you to perform complex provisioning and artifact management actions towards SharePoint. The commands use CSOM and can work against both SharePoint Online as SharePoint On-Premises.

Applies to: SharePoint Online | SharePoint 2016 | SharePoint 2013

Installation

There are 3 ways to install the cmdlets. We recommend, where possible, to install them from the PowerShell Gallery. Alternatively you can download the setup files or run a PowerShell script to download the PowerShellGet module and install the cmdlets subsequently.

PowerShell Gallery

If you main OS is Windows 10, or if you have PowerShellGet installed, you can run the following commands to install the PowerShell cmdlets:

Notice: if you install the latest PowerShellGet from Github, you might receive an error message stating

PackageManagement\Install-Package : The version 'x.x.x.x' of the module 'SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline' being installed is not catalog signed.

In order to install the cmdlets when you get this error specify the -SkipPublisherCheck switch with the Install-Module cmdlet, e.g. Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline -SkipPublisherCheck -AllowClobber

Setup files

You can download setup files from the releases section of the PnP PowerShell repository. These files will up be updated on a monthly basis. Run the install and restart any open instances of PowerShell to use the cmdlets.

Installation script

This is an alternative for installation on machines that have at least PowerShell v3 installed. You can find the version of PowerShell by opening PowerShell and running $PSVersionTable.PSVersion. The value for Major should be above 3.

To install the cmdlets you can run the below command which will install PowerShell Package Management and then install the PowerShell Modules from the PowerShell Gallery.

Invoke-Expression (New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sharepoint/PnP-PowerShell/master/Samples/Modules.Install/Install-SharePointPnPPowerShell.ps1')

Updating

Every month a new release will be made available of the PnP PowerShell Cmdlets. If you earlier installed the cmdlets using the setup file, simply download the latest version and run the setup. This will update your existing installation.

If you have installed the cmdlets using PowerShellGet with Install-Module from the PowerShell Gallery then you will be able to use the following command to install the latest updated version:

Update-Module SharePointPnPPowerShell*

This will automatically load the module after starting PowerShell 3.0.

You can check the installed PnP-PowerShell versions with the following command:

Get-Module SharePointPnPPowerShell* -ListAvailable | Select-Object Name,Version | Sort-Object Version -Descending

Getting Started

To use the library you first need to connect to your tenant:

Connect-PnPOnline –Url https://yoursite.sharepoint.com –Credentials (Get-Credential)

Notice: if you use multi-factor authentication on your tenant, use

Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://yoursite.sharepoint.com -UseWebLogin

To view all cmdlets, enter

Get-Command -Module *PnP*

At the following links you will find a few videos on how to get started with the cmdlets:

• https://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/OfficeDevPnP/PnP-Web-Cast-Introduction-to-Office-365-PnP-PowerShell
• https://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/OfficeDevPnP/Introduction-to-PnP-PowerShell-Cmdlets
• https://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/OfficeDevPnP/PnP-Webcast-PnP-PowerShell-Getting-started-with-latest-updates

Setting up credentials

See this wiki page for more information on how to use the Windows Credential Manager to setup credentials that you can use in unattended scripts

Cmdlet overview

Apps

Base Cmdlets

Branding

Client-Side Pages

Content Types

Diagnostic utilites

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Document Sets

Event Receivers

Features

Fields

Files and Folders

Information Management

Lists

Microsoft Graph

Provisioning

Publishing

Records Management

Search

SharePoint Recycle Bin

SharePoint WebHooks

Sites

Taxonomy

Tenant Administration

User and group management

User Profiles

Utilities

Web Parts

Webs

Workflows

Additional resources

• SharePoint PnP PowerShell on GitHub