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Every month there is a new release of the Office SharePoint PnP PowerShell Commands. I've been downloading them and just running the install wizard (next-next). This time (november 2016 release) I encountered a strange issue: Connect-SPOnline seemed to be available ('Intellisense') but when trying to use it I received the error 'The term 'Connect-SPOnline' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.'

After removing the software via 'Add-Remove Programs' and re-installing it, I noticed that 'Connect-SPOnline' was gone and a new command 'Connect-PnpOnline' was available.

Does this mean that I should always remove the PnP Powershell Commands before reinstalling the new version? Or is there another better way to update them?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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It's ok to uninstall and install it again, because they are simply copying files into the file system.
Actually uninstalling is not required, but just to make sure that everything is fresh and in a good state, may be that's worthwhile. In your case I think some kind of mess took place.

But I can propose you some alternative option which I found pretty good. Since you are using PowerShell, you can use Install-Module and Update-Module commands in order to load modules.
For enable this feature, you need to install PowerShellGet module.
It's included by default in Windows 10, for other OS you need to either download Windows Management Framework (WMF) 5.0 or download and install PowerShellGet manually for PowerShell 3+. More info here

Right after installation you can use Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline for installation and Update-Module SharePointPnPPowerShell* for updating to the latest version.

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  • does the "Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline" apply for SharePoint 2113 on premise as well?? Cause this did not work for me :( Also tried the "Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShell2013" ps command
    – devnation
    Commented Aug 28, 2017 at 14:31
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With the November release, PnP PowerShell have renamed all their commands to avoid a collision with the SPO Management Shell. What you've experienced is likely a one-time thing due to this big breaking change.

http://www.erwinmcm.com/the-case-of-get-sposite/

In the post Erwin says they would create aliases so that the old naming conventions would work for a while, but based on your experience that does not seem to be the case.

Lots of us are going to have lots of fun re-writing all our scripts.

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