How do I use Format-Table without truncation of values?

I currently have a script that pings servers and checks the status of services running on each server.

I save the output with Out-File but PowerShell places ellipses or "..." after long strings. I don't want it to do this. For example:

MachineName  ServiceName             Status StartType
-----------  -----------             ------ ---------
SrvGtw01     Test.MyService....       Running  

I want it to display the full name like:

MachineName  ServiceName              Status StartType
-----------  -----------              ------ ---------
SrvGtw01     Test.MyServiceName.Here  Stopped  Disabled

I've been reading that you can set the $FormatEnumerationLimit preference variable to -1 and I have tried that but it's not working. I'm not sure how I should place it in my script.

The $FormatEnumerationLimit preference variable doesn't apply here, because its purpose is to determine how many elements of a collection-valued property to display (e.g, $FormatEnumerationLimit = 2; [pscustomobject] @{ prop = 1, 2, 3 } prints (at most) 2 elements from .prop's value and hints at the existence of more with ...; e.g., {1, 2...}).

Instead, you must:

• (a) ensure that individual columns don't truncate their values on display:

  • Pipe to Format-Table -Autosize first.

  • Separately, as Pedro J Roman's answer notes, you can use -Wrap to ensure that the last column that fits within the overall output width (see next point) is represented without truncation, albeit spread across multiple lines, with line breaks inserted as needed.

• and (b) ensure that the overall output width can fit all columns:

  • Pipe to Out-File -Width with a sufficiently large value (don't use [int]::MaxValue, though, because every line of tabular output gets padded to that very width^[1]) .

    • Caveat: If you don't set -Width explicitly - as would happen if you just used >, for instance - the current console window's width is used - whatever it happens to be.

For instance:

# Assumes that the objects in $results only contain the properties
# of interest (MachineName, ServiceName, Status, StartType); you 
# can also pass an explicit list of output properties to Format-Table, however.
$results | Format-Table -AutoSize | Out-File -Width 512 C:\log.txt -Append

Note: To preview the output in the console - which may involve line-wrapping - use
Out-String -Width 512 instead.

^{[1] In PowerShell (Core) 7+ this undesirable last-column padding has been removed.}