Get target of shortcut (.lnk) file with powershell

Question

I have a bunch of .lnk files and need to treat them differently depending on the target that the shortcut points to. I've found very little of how to this with other languages, but nothing about doing this with powershell.

I've tried this:

$sh = New-Object -COM WScript.Shell
$target = $sh.CreateShortcut('<path>').Target

But this returns an empty string even though I can see in the .lnk properties that the Target is specified.

Any idea on how to accomplish this?

Answer 1

You have made an error in the property; as wOxxOm suggests, you should be using TargetPath rather than Target:

$sh = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
$target = $sh.CreateShortcut('<full-path-to-shortcut>').TargetPath

Google and MSDN were indeed helpful here; additionally, piping objects to Get-Member can often be useful and educational. This question also shows how to manipulate shortcuts using PowerShell, and uses the same technique as seen here.

If you want the arguments to the executable as well, those are stored separately:

$arguments = $sh.CreateShortcut('<full-path-to-shortcut>').Arguments

Again, piping objects to Get-Member - in this case, the object returned by WScript.Shell.CreateShortcut() - provides useful information.