How to change the background color of an Excel report - excel

Question

Basically, I am using this script to run through all the .csv files in a specific folder and merge them all together. But after the merge, I still want to change the background color of each .csv file.
The script that I got so far does not do that, can't figure out how to do it as I am really new in PowerShell.
# Get all the information from .csv files that are in the $IN_FILE_PATH skipping the first line:
$getFirstLine = $true
get-childItem "$IN_FILE_PATH\*.csv" | ForEach {
$filePath = $_
$lines = $lines = Get-Content $filePath
$linesToWrite = switch ($getFirstLine) {
$true { $lines }
$false { $lines | Select -Skip 1 }
}
# Import all the information... and tranfer to the new workbook.
$Report_name = $((get-date).ToString("yyyy.MM.dd-hh.mm"))
$getFirstLine = $false
Add-Content "$OUT_FILE_PATH\Report $Report_Name.csv" $linesToWrite
}
e.g. The .csv file has this pattern:
Name Age
Richard 18
Carlos 20
Jonathan 43
Mathew 25
Making sure to understand that Richard (18 years old) and Carlos (20 years old) are from filenumber1.csv - Jonathan (43 years old) and Mathew (25 years old) are from filenumber2.csv
I want Carlos' and Richard's rows to be with a white background, whereas Jonathan's and Mathew's rows to be grey. So that repeats in white-grey-white-grey dividing it by each file.
I am trying to make it more friendly to observe the report in the end - to make sure that you can this separation from file to file more clear.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

As Vivek Kumar Singh mentioned in comments, .csv doesn't contain any formatting options. It's recommended to work with Excel file instead. And for that purpose, the best module I know and use is ImportExcel.
The code to set formatting is as below (inspired by this thread):
$IN_FILE_PATH = "C:\SO\56870016"
# mkdir $IN_FILE_PATH
# cd $IN_FILE_PATH
# rm out.xlsx
# Define colors
$colors = "White", "Gray"
# Initialization
$colorsTable = #()
$data = #()
$n = 0
Get-ChildItem "$IN_FILE_PATH\*.csv" | % {
$part = Import-Csv $_
$data += $part
for ($i = 0; $i -lt ($part).Count; $i++) {
$colorsTable += $colors[$n%2]
}
$n++
}
$j = 0
$data | Export-Excel .\out.xlsx -WorksheetName "Output" -Append -CellStyleSB {
param(
$workSheet,
$totalRows,
$lastColumn
)
foreach($row in (2..$totalRows )) {
# The magic happens here
# We set colors based on the list which was created while importing
Set-CellStyle $workSheet $row $LastColumn Solid $colorsTable[$j]
$j++
}
}
Hopefully the comments in the code help you to better understanding of what's going on in the code.