[PowerShell]Get-Content and Add Column Entry? - powershell

Question

I am trying to input a list of users into PowerShell and get a specific security group attached to the user's account. At this current time, I have two pieces - an Excel sheet with multiple pieces of data, and a .txt with just the user's usernames. The script I have currently just inputs the user's usernames from the .txt and gets the security group from their account that matches a specific prefix, however I noticed doing it this way doesn't give any specific order. Even though the users are in a specific order (copied and pasted exactly from the excel document), the actual output doesn't come back well.
So, here's what I'd Like to do now, I just don't know how. I would like to get the content from the Excel document, take all of the usernames and do Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership like I am now, and then write the security group Back to the line that matches the username. For example, if I looked up the SG for msnow, it would get the SG for msnow and then write the SG back to the row that has msnow, and continues through the list. Instead of just doing an Out-GridView, it would actually write this to the Excel document.
Any help on making this work?
Here is the code I have right now.
Import-Module ActiveDirectory
$Names = Get-Content C:\Temp\Users.txt
$Records = #()
Foreach ($ADUsers in $Names) {
Try {
$SG = Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership -Identity $ADUsers | Select Name | Where {$_.Name -Like "SG - *"}
$SGName = $SG.Name
}
Catch [ADIdentityNotFoundException] {
$SGName = "User not found"
}
$Records += New-Object PSObject -Property #{"UserName" = $ADUsers;"Security Group" = $SGName}
}
Write-Host "Generating CSV File..."
$Records | Out-GridView
Thank you!

Answer 1

If you save the Excel as CSV, so it will look something like
"UserName","Security Group","InsideInfo"
"bloggsj","","tall guy"
"ftastic","","nothing worth mentioning"
things shouldn't be that hard to do.
$out = 'D:\Test\Updated_usersandgroups.csv'
$csv = Import-Csv -Path 'D:\Test\usersandgroups.csv'
Write-Host "Updating CSV File..."
foreach ($user in $csv) {
try {
$SG = Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership -Identity $user.UserName -ErrorAction Stop
# if more groups are returned, combine them into a delimited string
# I'm using ', ' here, but you can change that to something else of course
$SGName = ($SG | Where-Object {$_.Name -Like "SG - *"}).Name -join ', '
}
catch [ADIdentityNotFoundException] {
$SGName = "User $($user.UserName) not found"
}
catch {
# something else went wrong?
$SGName = $_.Exception.Message
}
# update the 'Security Group' value
$user.'Security Group' = $SGName
}
Write-Host "Generating updated CSV File..."
$csv | Export-Csv -Path $out -UseCulture -NoTypeInformation
# show output on screen
$csv | Format-Table -AutoSize # or -Wrap if there is a lot of data
# show as GridView (sorts by column)
$csv | Out-GridView
Output in console would then look like
UserName Security Group InsideInfo
-------- -------------- ----------
bloggsj SG - Group1, SG - Group1 tall guy
ftastic SG - Group1 nothing worth mentioning
Note: I don't know what delimiter your Excel uses when saving to CSV file. On my Dutch machine, it uses the semi-colon ;, so if in your case this is not a comma, add the delimiter character as parameter to the Import-Csv cmdlet: -Delimiter ';'
Excel uses whatever is set in your locale as ListSeparator for the delimiter character. In PowerShell you can see what that is by doing (Get-Culture).TextInfo.ListSeparator. On output, the -UseCulture switch will make sure it uses that delimiter so Excel will understand