Powershell work with multiline text in Excel cell - excel

Question

I have a fairly simple request (for me it is quite tough task tbh).
I have two CSV files which I want to convert to Excel so each of these two CSV files would occupy one sheet each.
So far, I have made it work, but I have this small thing I want to correct.
One of the cells in CSV contains multiple text lines, something like this:
This is entry 1
This is entry 2
I would like to have these two entries to be imported into Excel cell the same way it is in CSV, but when I check my Excel file, the second entry is imported into next row:
Row 1 Cell1 - This is entry 1
Row 2 Cell1 - This is entry 2
I don't know if I should work with .NET class worksheet.UsedRange.EntireRow or worksheet.UsedRange.EntireColumn or something else.
I was checking MSDN, but since I am still a noob, I couldn't find anything.
This is the sample of my code:
Function Merge-CSVFiles
{
Param(
$CSVPath = ".\Reports",
$XLOutput=".\final_final_report.xlsx"
)
$csvFiles = Get-ChildItem ("$CSVPath\*") -Include *.csv
$Excel = New-Object -ComObject excel.application
$Excel.visible = $false
$Excel.sheetsInNewWorkbook = $csvFiles.Count
$workbooks = $excel.Workbooks.Add()
$CSVSheet = 1
Foreach ($CSV in $Csvfiles)
{
$worksheets = $workbooks.worksheets
$CSVFullPath = $CSV.FullName
$SheetName = ($CSV.name -split "\.")[0]
$worksheet = $worksheets.Item($CSVSheet)
$worksheet.Name = $SheetName
$TxtConnector = ("TEXT;" + $CSVFullPath)
$CellRef = $worksheet.Range("A1")
$Connector = $worksheet.QueryTables.add($TxtConnector,$CellRef)
$worksheet.QueryTables.item($Connector.name).TextFileCommaDelimiter = $True
$worksheet.QueryTables.item($Connector.name).TextFileParseType = 1
$worksheet.QueryTables.item($Connector.name).Refresh()
$worksheet.QueryTables.item($Connector.name).delete()
$worksheet.UsedRange.EntireColumn.AutoFit()
$CSVSheet++
}
$workbooks.SaveAs($XLOutput,51)
$workbooks.Saved = $true
$workbooks.Close()
[System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($workbooks) | Out-Null
$excel.Quit()
[System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($excel) | Out-Null
[System.GC]::Collect()
[System.GC]::WaitForPendingFinalizers()
}

Answer 1

I am not sure why the method you are using does that but I was able to reproduce on my system as well. I do some similar operations in one of my scripts that builds a large Excel workbook and I have used the following method with success:
Import the CSV with Import-CSV
Convert it to a multi-dimensional array
Write the array to Value2 of the range object
For example, replace your code that looks like this:
$TxtConnector = ("TEXT;" + $CSVFullPath)
$CellRef = $worksheet.Range("A1")
$Connector = $worksheet.QueryTables.add($TxtConnector,$CellRef)
$worksheet.QueryTables.item($Connector.name).TextFileCommaDelimiter = $True
$worksheet.QueryTables.item($Connector.name).TextFileParseType = 1
$worksheet.QueryTables.item($Connector.name).Refresh()
$worksheet.QueryTables.item($Connector.name).delete()
With this instead:
$CsvContents = Import-Csv $CSVFullPath
$MultiArray = (ConvertTo-MultiArray $CsvContents -Headers).Value
$StartRowNum = 1
$StartColumnNum = 1
$EndRowNum = $CsvContents.Count + 1
$EndColumnNum = ($CsvContents | Get-Member | Where-Object { $_.MemberType -eq 'NoteProperty' }).Count
$Range = $worksheet.Range($worksheet.Cells($StartRowNum, $StartColumnNum), $worksheet.Cells($EndRowNum, $EndColumnNum))
$Range.Value2 = $MultiArray
For that to work you will also need the function I use for converting an object to a multi-dimensional array (based off the one posted here but with some slight modifications):
function ConvertTo-MultiArray
{
param (
$InputObject,
[switch]$Headers = $false
)
begin
{
$Objects = #()
[ref]$Array = [ref]$null
}
process
{
$Objects += $InputObject
}
end
{
$Properties = $Objects[0].PSObject.Properties | ForEach-Object{ $_.Name }
$Array.Value = New-Object 'object[,]' ($Objects.Count + 1), $Properties.Count
$ColumnNumber = 0
if ($Headers)
{
$Properties | ForEach-Object{
$Array.Value[0, $ColumnNumber] = $_.ToString()
$ColumnNumber++
}
$RowNumber = 1
}
else
{
$RowNumber = 0
}
$Objects | ForEach-Object{
$Item = $_
$ColumnNumber = 0
$Properties | ForEach-Object{
if ($Item.($_) -eq $null)
{
$Array.Value[$RowNumber, $ColumnNumber] = ""
}
else
{
$Array.Value[$RowNumber, $ColumnNumber] = $Item.($_).ToString()
}
$ColumnNumber++
}
$RowNumber++
}
$Array
}
}