Imagine the scenario: You are working on a script or command in your PowerShell session and you need to get help on a cmdlet. Sure, you have tab completion, but you can’t remember whether the parameter takes a string or an object, or you can’t remember how the value should be formatted. So you break out the ever helpful (haha) get-help cmdlet.

Get-help provides you the information, but now you have to get back to your command. You start typing the command and realize you need more information. You either have to scroll up or rerun get-help. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just have the help in a separate window that you can reference for as long as you need it?

Well it should be no surprise that you can display help in a separate window. Otherwise I wouldn’t have anything to write about, right? In version 3, Get-Help has a new parameter, -ShowWindow. As you can imagine -ShowWindow presents the help contents in a new, separate window as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Get-Help -ShowWindow (Click image for full-size)

Now you can continue editing your command AND have the help right there where you need it. Furthermore, you can search the help and customize the output to include/exclude the section you want by clicking on the Settings button as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Get-Help -ShowWindow Options. (Click image for full-size)

Disclaimer: This post covered PowerShell Version 3 CTP 2. Since this a pre-release version, there is a possibility that the the features described herein will be changed or completely removed from the final product.