{"id":15401,"date":"2011-03-06T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-06T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2011\/03\/06\/learn-how-to-create-custom-column-heads-for-powershell-out-gridview\/"},"modified":"2011-03-06T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-06T00:01:00","slug":"learn-how-to-create-custom-column-heads-for-powershell-out-gridview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/learn-how-to-create-custom-column-heads-for-powershell-out-gridview\/","title":{"rendered":"Learn How to Create Custom Column Heads for PowerShell Out-GridView"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: The Scripting Wife learns how to create custom column headings for the Windows PowerShell Out-GridView<\/strong> cmdlet.<\/p>\n

Weekend Scripter <\/h3>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, here. It is a typical weekend for me. I am up early, sipping a cup of English Breakfast tea<\/a>, and watching a pot of Irish steel-cut oats<\/a> simmer on the stove. I am glancing over several books, trying to decide upon which one I will spend the day with. I am leaning toward Shadow Divers<\/a>, which is a book about a group of scuba divers in New Jersey. <\/p>\n

I get up to stir the oats, and when I return to the table, I notice that I have a guest.<\/p>\n

“Good morning,” I said cheerily. “What brings you out this early on a weekend morning?”<\/p>\n

“Mumrf! Rrrrrr,” the Scripting Wife<\/a> muttered.<\/p>\n

“Would you like a bowl of oats?” I pleasantly asked.<\/p>\n

“Do I look like a horse?” she quizzed not really expecting an answer.<\/p>\n

“You really are not a morning person are you?” I asked not expecting an answer either.<\/p>\n

“You know me better than that,” she threatened.<\/p>\n

I got up, and eased over to the stove. I stirred the oats for a few seconds.<\/p>\n

“Still too soupy,” I said to myself. <\/p>\n

“Would you like a cup of tea, my dear?” I offered.<\/p>\n

“What makes you think I want to drink HOT tea?” she asked. “You can get me a Coke if you want to do something to make me happy.”<\/p>\n

“OK,” I said as I headed to the refrigerator. “I have an idea.”<\/p>\n

“Stop the presses,” she said with pretentious seriousness.<\/p>\n

“It came to me yesterday, when I was working on the script to report large files<\/a>,” I said.<\/p>\n

“And,” she said slowly indicating interest.<\/p>\n

“You need to know how to add custom column headings to an Out-GridView<\/b>,” I said.<\/p>\n

“I already know how to do that. I read your blog yesterday,” she stated flatly.<\/p>\n

“I see. Well show me what you have,” I said.<\/p>\n

“All I need to do is to take the Get-FileSizes.ps1 script from yesterday, and add a pipe to the Out-Gridview<\/b> cmdlet at the end of the script,” she announced.<\/p>\n

“Uh huh. And that will work?” I asked. <\/p>\n

“I am not certain because I have not done it before, but it should work,” she said with a little less confidence in her voice than she had previously exhibited. “You said to not be afraid to try things, so here goes.”<\/p>\n

The Scripting Wife opened up the Get-FileSizes.ps1 script in the Windows PowerShell<\/a> ISE. She went to the end of the script and added a pipeline<\/a> character and the Out-GridView<\/strong> cmdlet. As shown in the following image, this did not work properly.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

“Well it nearly worked,” she said in a sulky voice. <\/p>\n

“You were definitely on the right track,” I said. “You are learning a lot.”<\/p>\n

“Are you making fun of me?” she asked.<\/p>\n

“No. Not at all. Yesterday, you saw in my blog that I talked about using a hash table to create custom column heads for the Format-Table<\/b> cmdlet. You surmised that you could pipe that to Out-GridView<\/b> and it would provide you with the custom column headings,” I stated. “It is perfectly logical.”<\/p>\n

“If it is so right, then why is it producing errors?” she asked.<\/p>\n

“You mean if it is so right, why is it so wrong?” I smiled. “That sounds like the name of a country-western song. The problem is that the Format-Table<\/b> cmdlet changes the object, and it should be the last thing in a pipeline.”<\/p>\n

“I see,” she said with a voice that stated she really did not see.<\/p>\n

“What you need to do, is change out Format-Table<\/b> with the Select-Object<\/b> cmdlet. Copy the Get-FileSizes.ps1 script into a new script and make the change. It will be simple to do,” I suggested. “Oh, and make sure you delete that Out-Gridview<\/b> from the end of the Get-FileSizes.ps1 script before you mess it up.”<\/p>\n

“So you are saying that all I need to do is to replace the Format-Table<\/b> cmdlet with the Select-Object cmdlet<\/b>, and it will work,” she said echoing disbelief.<\/p>\n

“Yes ma’am,” I said.<\/p>\n

The Scripting Wife copied the Get-FileSizes.ps1 script and pasted it into a new script. She then changed Format-Table<\/b> to Select-Object<\/b>. She also removed the AutoSize<\/i> and Wrap<\/i> switches that are used by the Format-Table<\/b> cmdlet. The resulting code is shown here.<\/p>\n

\n

Get-FileSizesOutGrid.ps1<\/p>\n

Get-ChildItem -path $home -ErrorAction silentlycontinue -Recurse | <\/p>\n

Sort-Object -Property length -Descending | <\/p>\n

Select-Object -property `<\/p>\n

@{Label=”Last access”;Expression={($_.lastwritetime).ToshortDateString()}},<\/p>\n

@{label=”size in megabytes”;Expression={“{0:N2}” -f ($_.Length \/ 1MB)}}, <\/p>\n

fullname | out-GridView<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Windows PowerShell ISE is shown here.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

The Grid View output with the custom column headings is shown here.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

“Wow! That is cool,” she said. “But that also means I need to learn how to do hash tables better, don’t I?”<\/p>\n

“Yes, I guess it does,” I said dreading the day I had to do that. <\/p>\n

Without my noticing, she had slipped from the table, and spooned out my oats into a bowl. I looked up, nodded my thanks, and turned to the book I had selected for the day. As I glanced at the authors note, it began thus…“A few years ago, a friend told me a remarkable story. Two recreational scuba divers had recently discovered…” Ah yes, a sea epic. It should be fun. <\/p>\n

Join me tomorrow as we continue to work our way through the 2011 Scripting Games Study Guide<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: The Scripting Wife learns how to create custom column headings for the Windows PowerShell Out-GridView cmdlet. Weekend Scripter Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, here. It is a typical weekend for me. I am up early, sipping a cup of English Breakfast tea, and watching a pot of Irish steel-cut oats simmer on the stove. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,3,4,74,61,45],"class_list":["post-15401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-displaying-output","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-scripting-wife","tag-weekend-scripter","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: The Scripting Wife learns how to create custom column headings for the Windows PowerShell Out-GridView cmdlet. Weekend Scripter Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, here. It is a typical weekend for me. I am up early, sipping a cup of English Breakfast tea, and watching a pot of Irish steel-cut oats simmer on the stove. […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}