How use "Where-Object" condition with '[PScustomobject]'? - powershell

Question

I have some code:
$output = [PSCustomObject]#{
Name = $ws.UsedRange.Columns.Item(1).Value2
Department = $ws.UsedRange.Columns.Item(3).Value2
}
$output | GM
TypeName: System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject
Name MemberType Definition
---- ---------- ----------
Equals Method bool Equals(System.Object obj)
GetHashCode Method int GetHashCode()
GetType Method type GetType()
ToString Method string ToString()
Department NoteProperty System.Object[,] Department=System.Object[,]
Name NoteProperty System.Object[,] Name=System.Object[,]
I need to sort and filter my $output, but I can't. Nothing happens. Probably doing something wrong.
PS> $output
Name Department
---- ----------
{Numbers, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7...} {Sales,IT,Accounting,Developers...}
And my condition:
PS> $output | Sort-Object Department -Descending | Where-Object {$_.Department -eq "Sales"}
Name Department
---- ----------
{Numbers, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7...} {Sales,IT,Accounting,Developers...}

Answer 1

You created a single object with 2 properties, each of which contains all values of its associated column. Since Sort-Object and Where-Object sort and filter lists of objects by their properties there's nothing for these cmdlets to do here.
What you actually want to do is create one object per row.
$output = foreach ($row in $ws.UsedRange.Rows) {
[PSCustomObject]#{
Name = $row.Columns.Item(1).Value2
Department = $row.Columns.Item(3).Value2
}
}
Untested, since I don't have MS Office at hand here.