Powershell Command to Compare Files

All Windows users have a powerful task automation tool called Powershell which uses its own scripting language. Tonight's tip shows how to user Powershell to compare the differences and similarities between two different text files.

Go to Start . . . and search for Powershell, and then open Powershell ISE. Use the standard cd - change directory - command to change the prompt to the directory where you have two files you want to compare.

In this example you can see we have two text files listing American cities. There are a few cities which are included in both lists.

If we enter this script in Powershell, referencing the two text files, a new file named 'results.txt' will be generated.

Compare-Object -ReferenceObject (Get-Content cities1.txt) -DifferenceObject (Get-Content cities2.txt) -IncludeEqual >results.txt

The resulting file will have two columns. The second column has either an arrow or an equal sign to indicate that an individual string is in either the first or second referenced file only, or both.

Thanks to the Scripting Guys for posting this here:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2013/11/18/powertip-compare-the-contents-of-files-with-powershell/

Powershell Script for Sorting Multiple Excel Files

A user with the handle Peter3 posted a Powershell script to stackoverflow.com which can be used to sort an Excel spreadsheet. Below I have edited the script in a very basic way so three different Excel files can be sorted by the script. I am just copying the portions from line reading, "function Release-Ref ($ref) { " to "$a = Release-Ref($objExcel) " . The file path to the Excel spreadsheets is listed at:

$objWorkbook = $objExcel.Workbooks.Open("C:\helloworld3\fielding.xlsx")

You specify the worksheet you want to sort on this line:

$objWorksheet = $objWorkbook.Worksheets.Item(1)

So this would sort the first worksheet,

$objWorksheet = $objWorkbook.Worksheets.Item(2)

. . . would sort the second worksheet, and so forth.

You specify the column you want to sort the data by on this line:

$objRange2 = $objworksheet.Range("A2")

. . . so the reference to A2 causes the data to be sort by column A starting with A2 as the first cell. The script will auto-Save the files, so you can just close them all without saving each one.

Just enter the script in the Script Pane in PowerShell ISE, and press play

function Release-Ref ($ref) { ([System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject( [System.__ComObject]$ref) -gt 0) [System.GC]::Collect() [System.GC]::WaitForPendingFinalizers() } $objExcel = new-object -comobject excel.application $objExcel.Visible = $True $objWorkbook = $objExcel.Workbooks.Open("C:\helloworld3\fielding.xlsx") $objWorksheet = $objWorkbook.Worksheets.Item(1)

$objRange = $objWorksheet.UsedRange $objRange2 = $objworksheet.Range("A2") [void] $objRange.Sort($objRange2) $objWorkbook.Save() $a = Release-Ref($objWorksheet) $a = Release-Ref($objWorkbook) $a = Release-Ref($objExcel) function Release-Ref ($ref) { ([System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject( [System.__ComObject]$ref) -gt 0) [System.GC]::Collect() [System.GC]::WaitForPendingFinalizers() } $objExcel = new-object -comobject excel.application $objExcel.Visible = $True $objWorkbook = $objExcel.Workbooks.Open("C:\helloworld3\batting.xlsx") $objWorksheet = $objWorkbook.Worksheets.Item(1)

$objRange = $objWorksheet.UsedRange $objRange2 = $objworksheet.Range("A2") [void] $objRange.Sort($objRange2) $objWorkbook.Save() $a = Release-Ref($objWorksheet) $a = Release-Ref($objWorkbook) $a = Release-Ref($objExcel) function Release-Ref ($ref) { ([System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject( [System.__ComObject]$ref) -gt 0) [System.GC]::Collect() [System.GC]::WaitForPendingFinalizers() } $objExcel = new-object -comobject excel.application $objExcel.Visible = $True $objWorkbook = $objExcel.Workbooks.Open("C:\helloworld3\pitching.xlsx") $objWorksheet = $objWorkbook.Worksheets.Item(1)

$objRange = $objWorksheet.UsedRange $objRange2 = $objworksheet.Range("A2") [void] $objRange.Sort($objRange2) $objWorkbook.Save() $a = Release-Ref($objWorksheet) $a = Release-Ref($objWorkbook) $a = Release-Ref($objExcel)

Get a list of all programs running in Windows

You can use a simple Powershell command - get-process - to get a list of all programs that are currently running on a Windows PC. Simply opening the PowerShell ISE (Intergrated Scripting Environment) and typing in the console pane:

Get-process

. . . will generate a list of programs currently running and give you information on how much memory they are using. [If you are running Windows 7 or later PowerShell ought to be already installed.] You can use this more specific command to get more practical information about running software:

Get-process |Select-Object name, fileversion, productversion, company

Appending the script with an export command like this:

Get-Process | Select-Object name, fileversion, productversion, company | Export-Csv test.csv

. . . will output the results to an Excel .csv file that you can find in the user's default folder at C:\Users