export object using Export-Csv doesn't work

Question

I'm trying to export the username and the user's group membership (of specifc groups) to a CSV file using Export-Csv. However, I couldn't accomplish this using several approaches.

My current script works fine but the output is shown on the PowerShell console alone:

$accounts = Get-Content "C:\Scripts\getUserGroups\users.txt"
foreach ($account in $accounts) {
    "$account member of:"
    Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership -Identity $account |
        select Name |
        Where-Object { $_.name -like 'Browsing_Group*' } |
        Sort Name
}

I want to export it to a file in an ordered manner:

UserName1
group membership

UserName2
group membership

etc...

I've tried to add to a variable but probably didn't do that correctly:

$ArrList = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@()
$accounts = Get-Content "C:\Scripts\getUserGroups\users.txt"

foreach ($account in $accounts) {
    $ArrList.Add($account)
    $groups = Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership -Identity $account |
              select Name |
              Where-Object {$_.name -like 'Browsing_group*' } |
              Sort Name 
    $ArrList.Add($grops)
}

Might be a different approach.

Do you want it as a csv-table or a file with a list like in your second code block? — T-Me
– T-Me, Commented Jul 24, 2019 at 8:26

Ansgar Wiechers · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-24 09:11:39Z

1

You need to build custom objects in order to export the data to a CSV via Export-Csv. The 2 main ways of doing that are:

using calculated properties:

$accounts |
    Select-Object @{n='Username';e={$_}}, @{n='Groups';e={
        (Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership -Identity $_ |
            Select-Object -Expand Name |
            Where-Object {$_ -like 'Browsing_group*' } |
            Sort-Object) -join ';'
    }} |
    Export-Csv 'C:\path\to\output.csv' -NoType

building custom objects directly:

$accounts | ForEach-Object {
    $groups = Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership -Identity $_ |
              Select-Object -Expand Name |
              Where-Object {$_ -like 'Browsing_group*' } |
              Sort-Object
    New-Object -Type PSObject -Property @{
        'Username' = $_
        'Groups'   = $groups -join ';'
    }
} | Export-Csv 'C:\path\to\output.csv' -NoType

With PowerShell version 3 or newer you can replace New-Object with the [PSCustomObject] type accelerator:

[PSCustomObject]@{
    'Username' = $_
    'Groups'   = $groups -join ';'
}

answered Jul 24, 2019 at 9:11

Ansgar Wiechers

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1 Comment

holder Over a year ago

works perfectly! thank you Ansgar Wiechers. Im just trying to understand your code. how come you did not use a foreach loop in the first solution? also, is this @{n='Username';e={$_}} a hash table?

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