Question

Many applications have associated help that you invoke by pressing F1.
What PowerShell command would launch the application AND open the help?
Applications I have in mind are Powershell ISE, Visual Studio, Microsoft Office, etc.
Is there a standard mechanism for this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

There’s no one command to do it but you can do it by:

1. Launching the application.
2. Activating it’s window
3. Sending the F1 key to it.

Here’s how:

Launch an application:

Start-Process -FilePath C:\The\Path\To\Program.exe 

Wait for it:

$WindowTitle = "The App You're Waiting For"
while ($true) {
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 1
    $p = get-process | ? {$_.MainWindowTitle -match $WindowTitle}
    if ($p) {break}
}

Activate the window:

[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.VisualBasic")
[Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction]::AppActivate($WindowTitle)

Send the F1 key:

[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")
[System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys]::SendWait("{F1}")