How can I get a plaintext list/array of local users on my system in powershell? - powershell

Question

I need to get a plaintext list or array of all the local users on my system so I can loop through them and preform certain actions. By "plaintext" I mean just the user's names. Nothing else. No fancy formatting, no titles, no groups, nothing but the user's names.
I've googled around and tried several solutions, (for e.g. this one powershell - list local users and their groups) but they all have extraneous data that makes looping through the users impossible.
Is there any way I can get just a plain list of users? I wouldn't mind a cmd solution if that's what you have. Note that I have already tried net users, but like I stated earlier, it has this extraneous data.

Answer 1

VBScript:
Dim ADsContainer, User
Set ADsContainer = GetObject("WinNT://.,Computer")
ADsContainer.Filter = Array("User")
For Each User In ADsContainer
WScript.Echo User.Name
Next
Paste the above lines into GetLocalUsers.vbs and run it like this:
cscript //nologo GetLocalUsers.vbs
If you want to use WMI directly in PowerShell, you can use this:
get-wmiobject Win32_UserAccount -filter 'LocalAccount=TRUE' |
select-object -expandproperty Name

Answer 2

You have to write it like this to get it formatted as you requested:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_UserAccount | Format-wide -property name -column 1
Prints:
Administrator
Guest
and so on..

Answer 3

After a bit more experimentation, reading, etc, I found a rather simple solution:
$accounts = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_UserAccount | Select name
Returns:
name
----
Administrator
Guest
John Doe
Other User
Not quite what I want, but if I loop through it like this:
foreach ($i in $accounts) { Write-host $i.name }
It prints:
Administrator
Guest
John Doe
Other User
This is messy, so I shortened it down to one loop:
foreach ($i in Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_UserAccount | Select name) {
# refer to the looped user as $i.name now
}
and per Bill_Stewart's comment, it is a good idea to filter by local account:
foreach ($i in Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_UserAccount -filter 'LocalAccount=true' | Select name) {
# refer to the looped user as $i.name now
}
Still less than optimal, but for now it suits my needs.