Export PowerShell Output to CSV (and Format a Table)

Getting results out of the console — to a spreadsheet, a file, or a clean table.

Export to CSV

Get-Process | Select-Object Name, Id, CPU |
  Export-Csv -Path .\procs.csv -NoTypeInformation -Encoding UTF8

-NoTypeInformation drops the #TYPE header line; -Encoding UTF8 keeps non-ASCII intact (and is the default in PowerShell 7).

Append to an existing CSV

Get-Service | Select-Object Name, Status | Export-Csv .\svc.csv -NoTypeInformation -Append

To plain text or JSON

Get-Process | Out-File .\procs.txt                       # plain text (as displayed)
Get-Service | ConvertTo-Json | Out-File .\svc.json        # JSON

Clean on-screen table

Get-Service | Where-Object Status -eq 'Running' |
  Format-Table Name, DisplayName, StartType -AutoSize

Add a calculated column (e.g. size in MB)

Get-ChildItem *.log | Select-Object Name,
  @{Name='MB'; Expression={ [math]::Round($_.Length / 1MB, 2) }}

Re-import a CSV later

Import-Csv .\procs.csv | Where-Object { [int]$_.CPU -gt 10 }

Notes: use Export-Csv for data you’ll reopen or process (it preserves columns); use Out-File only for the visual output. Don’t pipe Format-Table into Export-Csv — Format-* emits formatting objects, not data, so the CSV comes out garbled. Select your columns first, format last. Import-Csv reads everything back as strings, so cast ([int], [datetime]) before math.