excelpowershellpowershell-cmdletget-eventlog

Storing EventViewerLogs in Excel spreadsheet from Powershell


I want to store the output of:

$Application = Get-EventLog -LogName Application | Where-Object {($_.EntryType -like 'Error' -or $_.EntryType -like 'Warning')};

in an excel spreadsheet.

I tried doing : $Application | Out-File E:\app.csv;

I'm getting the output as: OUTPUT

As you can see the columns are not separately aligned in the excel spreadsheet and also the column values/content are incomplete and end with (...).

I want to properly store the complete values that each column holds in the excel spreadsheet.


Solution

  • As already mentioned in the comment, you are looking for Export-Csv cmdlet which Converts objects into a series of comma-separated (CSV) strings and saves the strings in a CSV file. You can do something like this -

    $Application = Get-EventLog -LogName Application | Where-Object {($_.EntryType -like 'Error' -or $_.EntryType -like 'Warning')};
    $Application | Export-Csv -path E:\app.csv -NoTypeInformation
    

    The next step to your problem would be converting the csv file into excel file since you need data stored in an excel spreadsheet. Below is the code which I have been using successfully for quite some time.

    #Define locations and delimiter
    $csv = "E:\app.csv" #Location of the source file
    $xlsx = "E:\app.xlsx" #Desired location of output
    $delimiter = ";" #Specify the delimiter used in the file
    
    # Create a new Excel workbook with one empty sheet
    $excel = New-Object -ComObject excel.application 
    $workbook = $excel.Workbooks.Add(1)
    $worksheet = $workbook.worksheets.Item(1)
    
    # Build the QueryTables.Add command and reformat the data
    $TxtConnector = ("TEXT;" + $csv)
    $Connector = $worksheet.QueryTables.add($TxtConnector,$worksheet.Range("A1"))
    $query = $worksheet.QueryTables.item($Connector.name)
    $query.TextFileOtherDelimiter = $delimiter
    $query.TextFileParseType  = 1
    $query.TextFileColumnDataTypes = ,1 * $worksheet.Cells.Columns.Count
    $query.AdjustColumnWidth = 1
    
    # Execute & delete the import query
    $query.Refresh()
    $query.Delete()
    
    # Save & close the Workbook as XLSX.
    $Workbook.SaveAs($xlsx,51)
    $excel.Quit()
    

    The above code will convert the csv file to an XLSX file. You can see this for more information.