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:\> $profile | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | fl name,definition


Name       : AllUsersAllHosts
Definition : string AllUsersAllHosts=C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\profile.ps1

Name       : AllUsersCurrentHost
Definition : string AllUsersCurrentHost=C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

Name       : CurrentUserAllHosts
Definition : string CurrentUserAllHosts=C:\Users\Paul\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1

Name       : CurrentUserCurrentHost
Definition : 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\Windows\PowerShell


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

connect-office-365-powershell-profile-function

Examples:

About the Author

Paul Cunningham

Paul is a former Microsoft MVP for Office Apps and Services. He works as a consultant, writer, and trainer specializing in Office 365 and Exchange Server. Paul no longer writes for Practical365.com.

Comments

  1. Meghan

    Thank you for this! Most everywhere else has the insufficient suggestion of >> $profile | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty << without the pipe to name,definition which turned out to be mondo helpful.

  2. Ed Kummel

    I find the Powershell Profile to be very helpful in Exchange. Because the use of the Exchange Shell is getting more and more prevalent, I need to keep a historical record of what I ran and when. For this, I use the start-transcript as the first line in my PowerShell Profile.
    I have several other entries, but I have a question:

    How can I edit/modify/create a profile on all the servers in my domain? I hate having to log onto all the servers individually and manually create a powershell profile on each server and then it’s only for me…
    Is there a way to automate this at all?

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