Powershell: How to show output onscreen and output to file? - powershell

Question

Hope you can help. Very new to PS, so please be patient :)
I have a problem with the script below. If I put the Out-File command on line 6, the results are printed in the powershell screen, but the txt file is blank. If I put the Out-File command at the end of Line 3, the text file is populated, but it doesn't output the results in the powershell window.
I'd like it to do both.
Frustrating :(
import-module activedirectory
$username = Read-Host 'Please enter Username!'
Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership $username | Get-ADGroup -Properties * | select name, description | Format-Table -Wrap -AutoSize
$wsh = New-Object -ComObject Wscript.Shell
$wsh.Popup("List has been saved to C:\Group_List.txt")
Out-File C:\Group_List.txt
Read-Host -Prompt "Press Enter to exit"

Answer 1

First of all, you do not capture the results from the Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership cmdlet anywhere and just send it out to screen using Format-Table.
Secondly, the output does not show the user that is a member of these groups, so if you are typing another user, the file would not reveal for which user these groups are valid..
Finally, insert a test to check if the inputted username actually is an existing user.
I would go for outputting a CSV file you can simply open in Excel. Something like this:
Import-Module activedirectory
$outFile = 'C:\Group_List.csv'
$username = Read-Host 'Please enter Username!'
# do some error checking to see if this is an existing user
$user = Get-ADUser -Filter "SamAccountName -eq '$username'" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if ($user) {
$groups = Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership -Identity $user.DistinguishedName |
Get-ADGroup -Properties Description | ForEach-Object {
# output an object with properties you need
[PsCustomObject]#{
User = $username
Group = $_.Name
Description = $_.Description
}
}
# show on screen
$groups | Format-Table -Wrap -AutoSize
# write to CSV file
$groups | Export-Csv -Path $outFile -UseCulture -NoTypeInformation
$wsh = New-Object -ComObject Wscript.Shell
$wsh.Popup("List has been saved to $outFile")
# clean up COM object after use
$null = [System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($wsh)
[System.GC]::Collect()
[System.GC]::WaitForPendingFinalizers()
}
else {
Write-Warning "User $username does not exist.."
}

Answer 2

You can use Tee-Object (inspired by the classic tee unix command-line tool) to fork an input stream into a variable or to a file on disk! If you want to write the formatted table to file as-is, simply tack it onto the end of the pipeline expression that outputs to the screen (you can skip the select command, Format-Table also takes a property list)
Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership $username | Get-ADGroup -Properties description | Format-Table -Property name,description -Wrap -AutoSize | Tee-Object -FilePath C:\Group_List.txt
If the output file is intended for later consumption by another computer/program, I would change strategies and export to a CSV file instead. To capture the data and output to both, we can assign the results of the initial query to a variable and then output twice in separate statements:
$groupsWithDescription = Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership $username |Get-ADGroup -Properties description |Select-Object Name,Description
# Output to screen, format as table
$groupData |Format-Table -Wrap -AutoSize
# Output to file, export data as CSV
$groupData |Export-Csv -Path C:\Group_List.txt -NoTypeInformation

Answer 3

Try adding the outfile command after your "Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership".
Should look something like this.
Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership $username | Get-ADGroup -Properties * | select name, description | Format-Table -Wrap -AutoSize| Out-File -FilePath $path
Using export-csv
`$result | export-csv -Path $csvFileName -NoTypeInformation`