Excel File Reader Script in Powershell Not Working? - excel

Question

I wanted to read the contents of an excel file and then output them to a text file. Currently, my code only outputs the results to the console.
I tried to write code that gets the applicable columns and then loads them into an array to be written to the console later.
$Excel = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$Excel.Visible = $False
$PLACE = "C:\Somepath\somename.xlsx"
$OpenFile = $Excel.Workbooks.Open($PLACE)
$Workbook = $OpenFile.Worksheets
$Worksheet = $Workbook.Item(1)
# Get the values for each column
$MNumber = $Worksheet.Cells | where {$_.value2 -eq "Material-Number"} | select -First 1
$MDescription = $Worksheet.Cells | where {$_.value2 -eq "Material-Description"} | select -First 1
# Get the values for each row in Material Number
$NumValues = #()
$NumValues = for($i=2; $MNumber.Cells.Item($i).Value2 -ne $null; $i++ ){
$MNumber.Cells.Item($i)
}
# Get the values for each row in Material Description
$DescValues = #()
$DescValues = for($i=2; $MDescription.Cells.Item($i).Value2 -ne $null; $i++ ){
$MDescription.Cells.Item($i)
}
$NumValues | ForEach-Object {Write-host $_.value2}
$DescValues | ForEach-Object {Write-Host $_.value2}
Nothing output to the console by the end of the process. Even though those are the exact columns and each column contains data.

Answer 1

Try match instead of eq here:
$MNumber = $Worksheet.Cells | where {$_.value2 -match "Material-Number"} | select -First 1
$MDescription = $Worksheet.Cells | where {$_.value2 -match "Material-Description"} | select -First 1
I'm not sure if your cell has other strings within it on $_.value2 but if it does eq will not work. It's trying to find the ENTIRE string it's conditioning against. Therefore, if there's other strings of data within the cell it will not pull the data.