As of January 19th, 2021 the new and improved PnP.PowerShell module is no longer prerelease and is ready for the masses. You can also find it in a GitHub repo. It replaces the venerable SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline module we all know and love. The new module has a lot changes, but here are a few of the highlights:
- PnP.PowerShell only works with online products like SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365. It does not work with SharePoint Server platforms like SharePoint 2013, 2016, or 2019.
- It is built on .NET core 3.1 so it runs on non Windows platforms like Linux, Mac, and Azure Functions. SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline is built on .NET 4.6.1 and only runs on Windows.
- PnP.PowerShell is focused on all of Microsoft 365, not just SharePoint. SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline started out focused on SharePoint and other things have snuck in over the years, but were never supported as well as we would have liked.
- Authentication relies on App Registrations. To facilitate the cross application support the module relies on Graph API permissions as opposed to straight up usernames and passwords. SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline uses App Registrations as well, but it’s not built on that premise like PnP.PowerShell is.
If you can, you should uninstall the SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline module and install PnP.PowerShell everywhere. You should also stop using Windows PowerShell 5.1 and move over to PowerShell 7.x. There are a couple of legit reasons why you can’t though. I have a whole blog post, “Using both PnP PowerShell Modules with PowerShell 5 and PowerShell 7” that covers how to have both modules and both shells available to you. For those of you with short attention spaces I’ll give you the tl;dr:
Open PowerShell 7.x in Administrator mode and uninstall all the modules:
Uninstall-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline -Force –AllVersions
Uninstall-Module PnP.PowerShell -Force –AllVersions
That should clear all the appropriate modules out of PowerShell 7.x. You’re good there.
Now open Windows PowerShell 5.1 in Administrator mode. Here you’ll uninstall all the modules and reinstall them:
Uninstall-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline -Force –AllVersions
Uninstall-Module PnP.PowerShell -Force –AllVersions
For good measure I close down the Windows PowerShell 5.1 host and open a new one before I install the new version. That might not be necessary, but it feels like cheap insurance. Either way, in a Windows PowerShell 5.1 Administrator shell install both modules:
Install-Module -Name SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline -Scope Allusers
Install-Module -Name PnP.PowerShell -Scope Allusers –AllowClobber
I added a little chocolate to the install commands to make them go down easier. First, I added -Scope Allusers to make sure Windows PowerShell 5.1 installs the module in a place that PowerShell 7.x can find it. I think any modules installed in an Admin window are installed there by default, but I’m not sure. Again, cheap insurance. Second, to the second (and any subsequent) module I added –AllowClobber. This tells PowerShell that it’s okay to install a module that has cmdlets that collide with cmdlets already on the system. This is okay because of the difference between installing a module and importing a module. You can read more about that in my previous post.
If you need one of the on-prem SharePoint Server modules use a line like this:
Install-Module -Name SharePointPnPPowerShell2019 -Scope Allusers –AllowClobber
You can have as many of these modules installed as long as you install the later ones with –AllowClobber.
Once you’ve got the modules installed you need to tell PowerShell which one to load. That’s done with the Import-Module cmdlet. When you open a new PowerShell window, or at the top of any PowerShell scripts, you can specify which PnP Module you want PowerShell to use. For instance:
Import-Module PnP.PowerShell
or
Import-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline
or
Import-Module SharePointPnPPowerShell2019
Then you know you’ll get the version of Connect-PnPOnline (or whatever) your code is running. In theory you could swap them in and out by using Remove-Module, but in reality there are some fiddley PowerShell things in the background (the AppDomain) that keeps this from being successful. My previous blog post does show you how to have multiple versions of the PnP module imported in the same window or script at the same time.
But really, stick to PnP.PowerShell and PowerShell 7 if humanly possible. 
I hope you find that all helpful. I don’t know about you, but I’m really excited about this new module.
tk
ShortURL: https://www.toddklindt.com/PoshNewPnPModule