Pulling Members out of an Arraylist Using Powershell

Question

New to powershell, trying to understand how things work/syntax - after scavaging microsoft docs and other postings I can't find a direct solution/proper code to get what I am looking for.

Get-Group | Select DisplayName, Members

This simply outputs two columns for me, all the groups... and all the members of each group. (300 mailboxes - and a lot of users)

When exported as CSV - the members become a string without any split/seperator outside of whitespace. This causes an issue because I am not able to sort based off member names.

the output in powershell itself would look like this for the members column:

{john doe, becky boo, bob smith...}
{ryan john, brianna nuggets, pizza pie...}

etc... goes on for the 300 mailboxes, and of course when exported itll show the full list of members.

Can someone show me how exactly I am supposed to access each individual name for each group? For example... for group1 - output EACH individual name.

output:

John Doe
Becky Boo
Bob Smith

Typically in other languages it would be something like members[0][0]would output the first ArrayList, first element... no idea how its done in powershell and can't find proper documentation for it.

Either a good direction to be pointed towards, an explanation on how to properly iterate over the object list, or store specific values... all information is helpful as I am just looking for learning material since I am doing it for fun anyway. Thanks in advance!

Edit:

Was able to output all groups & members to excel - allowing me to filter it properly with any method I choose (All members belonging to xxx group, or what groups xxx member belongs to.)

$results=@()
$groups = Get-group -resultsize unlimited | sort displayname
$groups | ForEach-Object {
    $group=$_
    $group.members | foreach-object {
        $member = $_
        $results += New-Object PSObject -property @{
            Member = $member
            GroupName = $group.DisplayName
            MailboxType = $group.RecipientTypeDetails
            GroupType = $group.GroupType
            ManagedBy = $group.ManagedBy
        }
    } 
}
$results | export-csv -path c:\All_Groups.csv

Gerrit Geeraerts · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-27 21:51:39Z

1

Will print the group name of the first group followed by all the users in it, remove or change -first 1 if u want more users:

Get-Group | Select -first 1 -properties DisplayName, Members | % {
    write-host $_.DisplayName -ForeGroundcolor Green
    $_.Members | % {write-host $_.DisplayName}
}

Or for some different syntax:

foreach ($group in Get-Group | Select -first 1 -properties DisplayName, Members) {
    write-host $group.displayname 
    foreach ($member in $group.members) {
        write-host $member.displayname -ForeGroundcolor Green
    }
}

How to access attributes:

$groups = get-group
$groups[0].DisplayName
$groups[0].Members[0].DisplayName

export-csv only works well for 1 dimension arrays. If u use 2D or more arrays then use something like Export-Clixml / import-clixml

Alternatively u could export manualy to a csv like this:

"groupDisplayName,members" | out-file -path ./export.csv 
foreach ($group in Get-Group) {
    $groupname_with_added_comma = $group.displayname + ","
    $all_members_seperated_with_dot_comma = ''
    foreach ($member in $group.members) {
        $all_members_seperated_with_dot_comma += $member.displayname + ";"
    }
    $line_to_appen_to_file = $groupname_with_added_comma + $all_members_seperated_with_dot_comma
    $line_to_appen_to_file | out-file -path ./export.csv -append
}

or in a difrent way:

"groupDisplayName,members" | out-file -path ./export.csv 
Get-Group | % {
    $groupname_with_added_comma = "$($_.displayname),"
    $all_members_seperated_with_dot_comma = ($_.members | select -expandproperty displayname) -join ";"
    $line_to_appen_to_file = $groupname_with_added_comma + $all_members_seperated_with_dot_comma
    $line_to_appen_to_file | out-file -path ./export.csv -append
}

edited Oct 27, 2020 at 21:51

answered Oct 27, 2020 at 16:07

Gerrit Geeraerts

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3 Comments

user3058571 Over a year ago

Absolutely awesome feedback.. Going over the info now, I also managed to get the exact output I was looking for to be able to filter through all groups & members that belong to those groups. - Please check out the new code I added and let me know what best practices/changes you might make.

Gerrit Geeraerts Over a year ago

Your result looks really nice, i like how u created your custom objects. I have some personal preference for creating, I like to do it like this. [pscustomobject]@{someproperty='somevalue'} instead off New-Object PSObject -property @{someproperty='somevalue'} But yours is as good as my way.

Gerrit Geeraerts Over a year ago

I also like to use % instead of foreach-object, but its personal also, % is short, foreach-object is better readable also for users whom are not familiar with powershell.

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