Excessive Width From Get-ChildItem or Out-String or Send-MailMessage

PowerShell Help
1

I am not sure which of the cmdlets is producing the excessive width or if any are … perhaps something else is at work here.

I currently am using Get-ChildItem -Path L:\ | Out-String assigned to a variable to capture the contents of a directory.

That variable is used with -Body from the Send-MailMessage cmdlet

But when the output arrives in the e-mail the output is very wide and the columns like MODE, LastWriteTime, and such scrunched together.

Example:

Mode LastWriteTime Length Name

---- ------------- ------ ---- (these don’t line up under the heading)

-a— 10/30/2020 12:31AM RM.0.FTF.DBPART100.2020102513090000009 (then lots of space this way ->)
76 (and some lines wrap and have a number which I don’t know what it is)

-a— 10/30/2020 12:32 AM TM.0.FIF.DBPART100.2020102513110000009 (then lots of space this way ->)
(and some lines wrap and don’t have this extra number)

 

With Out-String I have tried a few parameters like -Width 80 but that does something odd. Using the first example line from above (the RM) file becomes:

-a— 10/30/2020 12:31AM RM.0.FTF.DBPART100.20201025130900000… (then lots of space this way ->)
76 09 (why does the 09 appear on the right instead of left like 09 76)
(if I arrow-right to the end of the line, the cursor wraps normally and proceeds to the 76 on the next line)

 

Anyway … Can this be formatted better? Or can something produce the output you get with the old dir.exe

Kind regards to all

2

When formatting for an email, leverage HTML. There is an ebook in the Free Resources that talks about reporting in HTML. The general idea:

$files = Get-ChildItem -Path C:\Scripts\*.txt | Select-Object -Property LastWriteTime, FullName

$mailParams = @{
    To         = 'user@myemail.com'
    From       = 'Pretty Name <do_not_reply@myemail.com>'
    Subject    = 'Stuff from Get-ChildItem'
    Body       = ($files | ConvertTo-Html -Title 'My Files' | Out-String)
    BodyAsHtml = $true
    SmtpServer = 'smtp.myemail.com'
}

Send-MailMessage @mailParams
3

Thanks Rob. I will give that a try shortly. Just wanted to report, I figured out what the extra number was. Because of the scrunching the 76 is actually part of the Length i.e. file size which I unfortunately did not include in my examples above. The file size is: 121,396,043,776

4

Thanks Rob, this worked nicely. I will use that source you referenced to see if it has info on making the output sorted by date.

5 
$files = Get-ChildItem -Path C:\Scripts\*.txt | 
         Sort-Object -Property LastWriteTime -Descending |
         Select-Object -Property LastWriteTime, FullName
6

Ok. Show off. :slight_smile: LOL. But, really, thank you.