During the last Ask Sympraxis our friend Kasper Larsen relayed a question he had gotten recently, “Is it possible to run the PnP.PowerShell module if I’m not allowed to install it or PowerShell 7?” The question brought tears of sadness to my eyes. Then, my indomitable spirit kicked in, “We’ll help this person!”, it said. And here we are.
The short answer to, “Can you run PnP.PowerShell if you can’t install anything” is a resounding, “Yes! Heck yes you can!” The answer to “how” comes in two parts. The first is to download the PowerShell 7 Zip file and run pwsh.exe out of there without installing it. The second part is to install the PnP.PowerShell module in the CurrentUser scope, so that it doesn’t try to write anything to a protected directory. After that, run PnP.PowerShell cmdlets to your heart’s content.
Here’s what it looks like:
There’s proof, the PowerShell way, that the user I’m logged in as isn’t an admin. First, I download the PowerShell 7 zip file and extract it to a folder in my Downloads folder.
Then I CD to the directory and run pwsh.exe, like this:
You can see from the $PSVersionTable that we’re running PowerShell 7. Now I install the PnP.PowerShell module to my user with the line Install-Module pnp.powershell –Scope CurrentUser.
After I run the install I use Connect-PnPOnline like I normally would. At the bottom I highlighted where the module is installed, your personal Documents directory.
One very important note, is that you (or anyone) won’t be able to connect if the PnP.PowerShell application registration hasn’t been approved in your tenant. This blog post, “How to Register the PnP.PowerShell App Registration if You’re not a Tenant Admin” covers it a bit. That App Registration is necessary in 99% of the use cases. You can connect and do a few SharePoint things without it, but that list is pretty short.
I’m not sure how often this will come up, but hopefully this blog post is at least interesting. 
tk
ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/PoshWithoutAdmin