Skip to main content

Using Properties with Spaces in the Names

This morning my Windows Server 2012 R2 class helped out another IT Pro out on the internet who needed to make some modifications to his Active Directory user accounts based off of information in a CSV file. One of the problems that he had was that the column header in the CSV included a space in the name.  We have three ways to deal with this.

1. Change the column header.  Yes, this would be a manual task every time you receive a new copy of the CSV for processing.  No fun there.  Actually avoiding having objects with spaces in their property names would be better, but we do not always have control over this.

2. Change the property name when the file is read.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

ForEach ($User in (Import-CSV -Path E:\PS\Users2.CSV |

    Select-Object -Property *,

    @{N="EM";E={"$($_.{Employee Number})"}))

{

    $Address = $User.EmailAddress

    Get-ADUser -Filter 'EmailAddress -eq $Address' -Properties EmailAddress, EmployeeID |

    Set-ADUser -EmployeeID $User.EM

 

}  

Here the Import-CSV command is piped to Select-Object where we convert the object property Employee Number to EM  Notice the extra curly braces required to get this to work.  On line 7, we use our custom property.

3. Use the property with the space in the name directly in the code.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

ForEach ($User in (Import-CSV -Path E:\PS\Users2.CSV))

{

    $Address = $User.EmailAddress

    Get-ADUser -Filter 'EmailAddress -eq $Address' -Properties EmailAddress, EmployeeID |

    Set-ADUser -EmployeeID "$($User.{Employee Number})"

 

}

You can see on line 5 that we are using the property with the space in the name.  To get this to work, the actual property name in encased inside of curly braces.

For those of you who have taken my PowerShell classes, you already know my position on spaces when used in variable names.  Same thing applies to spaces in a property name.  Avoid them or be ready to write some extra code.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adding a Comment to a GPO with PowerShell

As I'm writing this article, I'm also writing a customization for a PowerShell course I'm teaching next week in Phoenix.  This customization deals with Group Policy and PowerShell.  For those of you who attend my classes may already know this, but I sit their and try to ask the questions to myself that others may ask as I present the material.  I finished up my customization a few hours ago and then I realized that I did not add in how to put a comment on a GPO.  This is a feature that many Group Policy Administrators may not be aware of. This past summer I attended a presentation at TechEd on Group Policy.  One organization in the crowd had over 5,000 Group Policies.  In an environment like that, the comment section can be priceless.  I always like to write in the comment section why I created the policy so I know its purpose next week after I've completed 50 other tasks and can't remember what I did 5 minutes ago. In the Group Policy module for PowerShell V3, th

Return duplicate values from a collection with PowerShell

If you have a collection of objects and you want to remove any duplicate items, it is fairly simple. # Create a collection with duplicate values $Set1 = 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 1 , 2   # Remove the duplicate values. $Set1 | Select-Object -Unique 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 What if you want only the duplicate values and nothing else? # Create a collection with duplicate values $Set1 = 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 1 , 2   #Create a second collection with duplicate values removed. $Set2 = $Set1 | Select-Object -Unique   # Return only the duplicate values. ( Compare-Object -ReferenceObject $Set2 -DifferenceObject $Set1 ) . InputObject | Select-Object – Unique 1 2 This works with objects as well as numbers.  The first command creates a collection with 2 duplicates of both 1 and 2.   The second command creates another collection with the duplicates filtered out.  The Compare-Object cmdlet will first find items that are diffe

How to list all the AD LDS instances on a server

AD LDS allows you to provide directory services to applications that are free of the confines of Active Directory.  To list all the AD LDS instances on a server, follow this procedure: Log into the server in question Open a command prompt. Type dsdbutil and press Enter Type List Instances and press Enter . You will receive a list of the instance name, both the LDAP and SSL port numbers, the location of the database, and its status.