SharePoint Online PowerShell

There are two modules for SharePoint Online and they do different jobs.

Lesson 2 min read Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7

Written and tested by Dhrub Bharali · Updated 02 October 2026

Overview

Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell provides the SPO cmdlets and operates at tenant scope: sites, quotas, sharing settings, tenant properties. Connect-SPOService needs the admin URL, the one with -admin in it, which is a frequent first stumble.

PnP.PowerShell operates within a site: lists, libraries, items, pages, permissions. Connect-PnPOnline connects to a specific site URL. It is community-maintained, considerably broader than the SPO module, and what most site-level scripting uses.

So tenant-level work uses SPO cmdlets, site-level work uses PnP cmdlets, and a script that does both needs two connections.

Get-SPOSite defaults to a limited number of results, so pass -Limit All for a full inventory. The same pattern as Exchange, for the same reason.

Throttling is aggressive in SharePoint Online. PnP cmdlets handle retries better than raw API calls, but a loop over thousands of items will still be slowed. Batch where you can and expect to run large operations in stages.

For automation, register an app registration with certificate authentication. Interactive connection in a scheduled script does not work.

Inspect this example’s structure

Read the command and its supplied arguments. This example requires real PowerShell or its module; this diagram does not execute it.

[pscustomobject]@{
  Admin = 'Connect-SPOService -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com'
  Sites = 'Get-SPOSite -Limit All | Select-Object Url, StorageQuota, Owner'
  PnP = 'Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/hr -Interactive'
  Lists = 'Get-PnPList | Select-Object Title, ItemCount'
} | Format-List

Stage 1[pscustomobject]@{Positional values or no named parameters
Stage 2Format-ListPositional values or no named parameters

An example to inspect

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[pscustomobject]@{
  Admin = 'Connect-SPOService -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com'
  Sites = 'Get-SPOSite -Limit All | Select-Object Url, StorageQuota, Owner'
  PnP = 'Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/hr -Interactive'
  Lists = 'Get-PnPList | Select-Object Title, ItemCount'
} | Format-List

What happens

This prints both connection patterns side by side. The Admin line shows the -admin URL that Connect-SPOService requires; the PnP line shows a site URL instead. Seeing them together is the fastest way to remember which module needs which, and that a script touching both scopes needs both connections.

Worth remembering

SPO cmdlets are tenant scope; PnP cmdlets are site scope.
Connect-SPOService needs the -admin URL, not the site URL.
Get-SPOSite needs -Limit All for a complete list.
Throttling is aggressive; batch large operations.

Primary documentation

Select-Object reference

Try it

Expected output · prints command text; does not execute these commands

1PS> [pscustomobject]@{

2PS> Admin = 'Connect-SPOService -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com'

3PS> Sites = 'Get-SPOSite -Limit All | Select-Object Url, StorageQuota, Owner'

4PS> PnP = 'Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/hr -Interactive'

5PS> Lists = 'Get-PnPList | Select-Object Title, ItemCount'

6PS> } | Format-List

Example reader

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[pscustomobject]@{
  Admin = 'Connect-SPOService -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com'
  Sites = 'Get-SPOSite -Limit All | Select-Object Url, StorageQuota, Owner'
  PnP = 'Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/hr -Interactive'
  Lists = 'Get-PnPList | Select-Object Title, ItemCount'
} | Format-List

Ready to inspect.

Prints both SharePoint connection patterns and their scopes.

Show reference output

Expected output · prints command text; does not execute these commands

Admin : Connect-SPOService -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com
Sites : Get-SPOSite -Limit All | Select-Object Url, StorageQuota, Owner
PnP   : Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/hr -Interactive
Lists : Get-PnPList | Select-Object Title, ItemCount

Keep going

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