If you need to count how many orders came from each state, the PowerShell Group-Object cmdlet does it in one line: Import-Csv .\orders.csv | Group-Object -Property State -NoElement. You get one row per state with a Count column. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how PowerShell Group-Object works on one small orders file, from a … Read more
My restock script died on the first row of a Columbus store’s inventory CSV with “Cannot convert value to type System.Int32” and “Input string was not in a correct format.” PowerShell tried to read text as a number, and the text didn’t fit. The quickest safe fix is to test the conversion first: In this … Read more
To convert a TIFF to PDF with PowerShell and no extra tools, print each TIFF page to the built-in Microsoft Print to PDF printer with PrintToFile turned on. That writes the PDF silently, with no Save As dialog: Below I check the printer, read a multi-page TIFF, wrap the whole conversion in a function and … Read more
To convert a string to a script block in PowerShell, use [scriptblock]::Create(). Then run it with the call operator &: It’s useful when the code comes from a config file or is built from settings, like a filter. Below I cover parameters, the quoting trap, filters, syntax checks and the security risk you need to … Read more
To make PowerShell write to a file in UTF-8, add -Encoding utf8 to Out-File, Set-Content, or Add-Content: The catch is the byte order mark (BOM). PowerShell 7 writes that file without a BOM, while Windows PowerShell 5.1 always adds one. I’ll show both results byte by byte, plus the clean ways to get BOM-less UTF-8 … Read more
To convert XML to a table in PowerShell, cast the file to [xml], walk down to the repeating element with dot notation, and pipe those nodes to Format-Table. Each child element and attribute becomes a column: That covers flat files. Real XML has attributes, nested nodes and namespaces, so I’ll also show how to pick … Read more
To convert HTML to plain text in PowerShell, strip the tags with -replace and then decode entities like & with WebUtility.HtmlDecode. For a short snippet, this one line does both: Full pages and email bodies need a bit more care, though. Scripts, styles and line breaks get in the way, and Windows PowerShell 5.1 and … Read more
To convert a UTF-16 file to UTF-8 with PowerShell, read it with Get-Content and write it back with Set-Content -Encoding utf8: Get-Content recognizes UTF-16 by itself. The catch is the byte order mark: PowerShell 7 writes UTF-8 without one, and Windows PowerShell 5.1 adds it. Below I show the real bytes, a version that behaves … Read more
Say your online store exports every order to an orders.xml file at night, and the finance team wants it in Excel by 8 AM. To convert XML to Excel using PowerShell, load the file with [xml], turn each order into a [pscustomobject] row, and pipe the rows to Export-Excel or Export-Csv. In this tutorial, I’ll … Read more
To convert a log file to HTML with PowerShell, split each line into fields, turn the lines into objects and pipe them to ConvertTo-Html. Out-File saves the page: The parsing step is what makes the table readable. Below I parse a sample application log, build a basic page, then a styled report with a summary … Read more