Add-Content to CSV Powershell

Question

When I run the below code I get a list of details in separate columns.

$file = 'c:\output\testing.csv'
   Get-AdUser -filter "DisplayName -eq 'joe bloggs'" | 
   Get-ADUser -Properties * |  
 Select-Object givenName, surname, mail, 
@{ Label = "Country"
Expression = { if ($_.Country) { $_.Country } else { "GB" } }
 ,samaccountname, department, description | Export-csv -path $file

Output (1) is as follows:

+-----------+---------+-----------------+---------+----------------+------------+-------------+
| givenName | surname |      mail       | Country | samaccountname | department | description |
+-----------+---------+-----------------+---------+----------------+------------+-------------+
| joe       | bloggs  | joe.b@email.com | GB      | bloggsG        | IT         | Support     |
+-----------+---------+-----------------+---------+----------------+------------+-------------+

However, if I amend the Export-CSV to Add-Content, the output (2) is as below:

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------+------+---------+----------------+------------+-------------+
|                                                               givenName                                                               | surname | mail | Country | samaccountname | department | description |
| {givenName=Fred; surname=Smith; mail=fred.s@email.com; Country=GB; samaccountname=smithF; department=Facilities; description=cleaner} |         |      |         |                |            |             |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------+------+---------+----------------+------------+-------------+

How do I use Add-Content to show the same output as the first table?

Answer 1

Add-Content is for appending unstructured text to a text file, similar to Set-Content - you cannot use it to append rows to an existing CSV file.

Instead, you must use Export-Csv -Append:

... | Export-Csv -Path $file -Append -Encoding Ascii # pick the proper encoding

Character-encoding caveats, as of Windows PowerShell v5.1^[1]:

• Without -Append, Export-Csv uses ASCII(!) encoding - against documented behavior.

  • This means that non-ASCII characters are transliterated to literal ?, i.e., you may lose information.

• With -Append, curiously, non-ASCII characters are UTF-8-encoded - irrespective of the file's original encoding.

To get predictable behavior, always use -Encoding explicitly with Export-Csv - both with and without -Append.

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^{[1] The cross-platform PowerShell Core edition is not affected, because it consistently uses BOM-less UTF-8 encoding by default.}