Out-File won't display what powershell ISE shows

Question

Ok, so I'm a beginner in Powershell. I'm at work so I wanted to auto some things. My work with this script is to select those specific users and their password expiration date, format the date to be human readable and then save all that in a txt file to be analized.

My current code is this:

$List = Get-Content D:\Users\c05896\Desktop\VIPS.txt
$Users = @()

foreach ($Item in $List){
$Users += Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties "msDSUserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed"| where {$_.Name -like "*$Item*"}}

$Users | Sort-Object | Select-Object Name, @{Name="Password expires";Expression={[datetime]::FromFileTime($_."msDS-UserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed" )}}
Out-File -filepath D:\Users\c05896\Desktop\VIPLista.txt -InputObject $Users

So, the script above is what I wrote. The output WITHIN the Powershell ISE is at follows:

Name                           Password expires         
----                           ---------------         
User 1                         10/11/2010 01:39:53 p.m.
User 2                         21/10/2018 10:21:43 a.m.
User 3                         21/10/2018 08:38:23 a.m.
.                                  .
.                                  .
.                                  .

That's what I want to output in the txt file, but instead I got this format:

DistinguishedName                   : CN=USER LASTNAME
OU=VIPs,OU=Users
Enabled                             : False
GivenName                           : USER LASTNAME
msDS-UserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed : 129192702049912335
Name                                : USER
ObjectClass                         : user
ObjectGUID                          : bb033273-6117-470b-9f07-aee2885a45bc
SamAccountName                      : B00057
SID                                 : S-1-5-21-808411757-1154953693-317593308-27012
Surname                             : USER
UserPrincipalName                   : XXXXX

I erased all names and lastnames just for privacy.

So, the question is what can I do to get the Out-File to display the information as it shows on Powershell ISE?

Thank you very much for your answers

Answer 1

Nas has a good answer for you regarding how to meet your objective. I'm going to try to answer the why.

When you used Get-ADUser to retrieve your user objects a number of properties are returned by default. You were aware of that and used Select-Object to select which attributes to return and you even added a new custom attribute.

The Select-Object output is what displayed in the ISE (and would have displayed in a console if you weren't using the ISE as well).

What you did not do is actually modify the objects that were stored in the $Users array so when you sent those objects to Out-File it received all the attributes of the objects.

Both of the options that Nas gives you above modify the objects in $Users while they are in the pipeline so that when they are sent to Out-File only the attributes you wanted to output to the file are remaining. His first example actually replaces the original $Users array with a new $Users array so that if you subsequently examine it, only your specified attributes will remain. In his second example, using Tee-Object, $Users still remains unmodified and if you examined the objects you would see that they still retain DistinguishedName, Enabled, GivenName, etc.

Answer 2

# --> $Users = $Users | ...
$Users = $Users | Sort-Object | Select-Object Name, @{Name="Password expires";Expression={[datetime]::FromFileTime($_."msDS-UserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed" )}}
Out-File -filepath D:\Users\c05896\Desktop\VIPLista.txt -InputObject $Users

# or
# combine ISE output with file output in one command using Tee-Object

$Users | Sort-Object |
  Select-Object Name, @{Name="Password expires";Expression={[datetime]::FromFileTime($_."msDS-UserPasswordExpiryTimeComputed" )}} | 
    Tee-Object -FilePath D:\Users\c05896\Desktop\VIPLista.txt