$ErrorActionPreference: the dial behind every error

Most PowerShell errors don’t stop your script — this preference variable decides what happens instead.

Lesson 2 min read Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7

Written and tested by Dhrub Bharali · Updated 02 October 2026

What the dial does

When a cmdlet hits a problem, it does not always stop. Most errors are non-terminating: the cmdlet reports the problem and the script carries on to the next line. $ErrorActionPreference is the preference variable that decides what happens next. Its default is Continue — print the error and keep going.

The four values

Continue (the default) — write the error and carry on.
SilentlyContinue — swallow it. Nothing is printed, but the error is still recorded in $Error. Useful when you have already handled the case yourself; dangerous as a habit, because genuine failures go quiet too.
Stop — promote the error to a terminating one. This is the value that makes try/catch work.
Inquire — stop and ask you what to do. Fine at an interactive prompt; never in a script.

Making errors catchable

A catch block only catches terminating errors. Reading a missing file is non-terminating by default, so without -ErrorAction Stop the catch never fires and the script sails past the failure. That is the single most common reason “try/catch doesn’t work”:

1PS> try {

2PS> Get-Item 'C:\nope.txt' -ErrorAction Stop

3PS> } catch {

4PS> "Couldn't read it: $($_.Exception.Message)"

5PS> }

The -ErrorAction common parameter overrides the preference for one call — that is the scalpel. Setting $ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop' at the top of a script is the hammer: every cmdlet’s errors become terminating, which is what you want when any failure should abort the run. Going the other way, a global 'SilentlyContinue' is how scripts fail quietly for months — prefer -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue on the one call you truly do not care about.

Try it

Illustrative output · values vary by environment

1PS> try {

2PS> $result = 10 / 0

3PS> Write-Output "Result: $result"

4PS> }

5PS> catch {

6PS> Write-Output "Caught: $($_.Exception.Message)"

7PS> }

8PS> finally {

9PS> Write-Output 'Finally always runs.'

10PS> }

Example reader

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try {
  $result = 10 / 0
  Write-Output "Result: $result"
}
catch {
  Write-Output "Caught: $($_.Exception.Message)"
}
finally {
  Write-Output 'Finally always runs.'
}

Ready to inspect.

Catches a terminating error and shows that finally runs either way.

Show reference output

Illustrative output · values vary by environment

Caught: Attempted to divide by zero.
Finally always runs.

Practise this

Choose a task

Catch a missing service

Request MissingService with -ErrorAction Stop inside try/catch. Return Service unavailable from the catch block.

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