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Get started with SharePoint Online Management Shell

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To get started using PowerShell to manage SharePoint Online, you need to install the SharePoint Online Management Shell and connect to SharePoint Online.

Install the SharePoint Online Management Shell by downloading and running the SharePoint Online Management Shell or installing the module from the PowerShell Gallery. Once installed, the module is available for use, and you do not need to install it again until you need features introduced in a later version. For example, you may need to install a new version for TLS 1.2 negotiation after October 2018.

First you can check if you have already installed the SharePoint Online Management Shell by running the following command in administrative mode in PowerShell:

Get-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -ListAvailable | Select Name,Version

If your operating system is using Windows PowerShell 5, you can also install the SharePoint Online Management Shell by running the following command in administrative mode:

Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell

If you don't have administrative privileges on the system, you can install the SharePoint Online Management Shell only for the current user by running the following command:

Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -Scope CurrentUser

To ensure you have all available cmdlets, you should always make sure the module is up to date. You can update the SharePoint Online Management Shell by running the following command in administrative mode:

Update-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell

To open the SharePoint Online Management Shell command prompt, from the Start screen, type sharepoint, and then click SharePoint Online Management Shell.

To connect with a user name and password

  1. Run the following command at the SharePoint Online Management Shell command prompt:

    Connect-SPOService -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com -Credential [email protected]

  2. When prompted with the Windows PowerShell credential request dialog box, type the password for the SharePoint admin account.

To assign a user the SharePoint admin role, see Assign admin roles or Assign admin roles to Microsoft 365 user accounts with PowerShell.

Note

If you encounter issues trying to connect or receive an error such as 'Error message: Could not connect to SharePoint Online', you may need to use Modern Authentication. See the following example:

Connect-SPOService -Credential $creds -Url https://tenant-admin.sharepoint.com -ModernAuth $true -AuthenticationUrl https://login.microsoftonline.com/organizations

To connect with multifactor authentication (MFA)

  1. Run the following command at the SharePoint Online Management Shell command prompt:

    Connect-SPOService -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com

  2. When prompted with the Microsoft SharePoint Online Management Shell dialog box, type the account name and password for a SharePoint administrator account, and then click Sign in.

  3. Follow the instructions in the Microsoft SharePoint Online Management Shell dialog box to provide the additional authentication information, such as a verification code, and then click Sign in.

You are now ready to use SharePoint Online commands.

Note

There is a known issue between the SharePoint Online Management Shell module and SharePoint Client Components SDK where the module will fail to load if both are installed on the same computer. If you encounter this issue, uninstall the SharePoint Client Components SDK.