{"id":8311,"date":"2007-03-07T00:24:55","date_gmt":"2007-03-07T00:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/powershell\/2007\/03\/07\/why-cant-i-pipe-format-table-to-export-csv-and-get-something-useful\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T13:16:49","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T20:16:49","slug":"why-cant-i-pipe-format-table-to-export-csv-and-get-something-useful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/why-cant-i-pipe-format-table-to-export-csv-and-get-something-useful\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Can’t I Pipe Format-Table to Export-Csv (and get something useful)?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ken’s PowerShell blog has an entry Remote Services and PowerShell<\/a> where he wrote a function to get services from a remote machine using WMI. He formatted the data using FT (format-table) and then went on to export the data to CSV. He pointed out that the following would NOT work\n<\/p>\n

rget-service remotemachinename netlogon | ft -autosize name,startmode,state,status,startname | export-csv services.csv\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Instead you should use:\n<\/p>\n

rget-service remotemachinename netlogon | Select-Object name,startmode,state,status,startname | export-csv services.csv\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Let’s take a minute to explore why the first command does not work. Let’s replace the Export-CSV with a Get-Member and see what we get:\n<\/p>\n

Ps> rget-service remotemachinename netlogon | ft -autosize name,startmode,state,status,startname | Get-Member \u2013MemberType Property<\/p>\n

TypeName: <\/span>Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.FormatStartData<\/strong><\/span>
<\/strong>
Name MemberType Definition
—- ———- ———-
autosizeInfo Property Microsoft.PowerShell….
ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd Property System.String ClassId…
groupingEntry Property Microsoft.PowerShell….
pageFooterEntry Property Microsoft.PowerShell….
pageHeaderEntry Property Microsoft.PowerShell….
shapeInfo Property Microsoft.PowerShell….<\/p>\n

TypeName: <\/span>Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.GroupStartData<\/strong><\/span>
<\/strong>
Name MemberType Definition
—- ———- ———-
ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd Property System.String ClassId…
groupingEntry Property Microsoft.PowerShell….Pitn
shapeInfo Property Microsoft.PowerShell….<\/p>\n

TypeName: <\/span>Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.FormatEntryData<\/strong>
<\/span>
Name MemberType Definition
—- ———- ———-
ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd Property System.String ClassId…
formatEntryInfo Property Microsoft.PowerShell….
outOfBand Property System.Boolean outOfB…
writeErrorStream Property System.Boolean writeE…<\/p>\n

TypeName: <\/span>Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.GroupEndData<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Name MemberType Definition
—- ———- ———-
ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd Property System.String ClassId…
groupingEntry Property Microsoft.PowerShell….<\/p>\n

TypeName: <\/span>Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.FormatEndData<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Name MemberType Definition
—- ———- ———-
ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd Property System.String ClassId…
groupingEntry Property Microsoft.PowerShell….<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What you are seeing is that Format-Table transforms the objects into a stream of formatting directives. These are then consumed by one of the OUT- Commands (Out-Host, Out-File, Out-String, Out-Printer). This is why you can’t pipe format-table to export-csv.\n<\/p>\n

Enjoy!\n<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Windows PowerShell\/MMC Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/PowerShell<\/a>
Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/technet\/scriptcenter\/hubs\/msh.mspx<\/a>\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ken’s PowerShell blog has an entry Remote Services and PowerShell where he wrote a function to get services from a remote machine using WMI. He formatted the data using FT (format-table) and then went on to export the data to CSV. He pointed out that the following would NOT work rget-service remotemachinename netlogon | ft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":600,"featured_media":13641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-8311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-powershell","tag-faq"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Ken’s PowerShell blog has an entry Remote Services and PowerShell where he wrote a function to get services from a remote machine using WMI. He formatted the data using FT (format-table) and then went on to export the data to CSV. He pointed out that the following would NOT work rget-service remotemachinename netlogon | ft […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}