Adam's AD Admin

I wrote about hash tables a while back in regards to counting OS types. The one thing I didn't lookinto back then was how to export the information to CSV. Easy, I hear you cry - just use export-csv!  Not quite as easy as you would imagine. The main thing to tackle is the fact that Hash Tables are not objects as we would usually consider them.  If you run get-member on a hash table you get the following properties : Count IsFixedSize IsReadOnly IsSynchronized Keys SyncRoot Values What is required is to create an object based on the hash table prior to exporting. Lets create a similar hash table to the one found in my previous post : $complist = get-ADcomputer -filter {enabled -eq $true} -properties operatingsystem $OSlist = @{} $complist | % {try {$OSlist.$($_.operatingsystem) ++}catch{$OSlist.None ++}} Export this to CSV and you get : PS U:\> $OSlist | Export-Csv "OScount1.csv" -NoTypeInformation PS U:\> type .\OScount1.csv "IsReadOnly",...

As my quest continues to find out more ways to get exceptions (see this last post for my first attempt), I have been sent this post  at MSDN, which greatly helps me on my way. (Thanks Peter and Swaminathan) Until now, it has been somewhat of a mystery to me how to generate the catch [class] to successfully catch the specific error you want.  As demonstrated in the above link, the following command reveals all.... $Error[0] | fl * -force As shown in the link, it reveals Microsoft.ActiveDirectory.Management.ADPasswordComplexityException as the class to catch.  so all you need to do is insert (or run) this line just after an error is generated and you will see what you need to catch! I will be noting all errors / exceptions I encounter so a future blog post will be in the making soon.  I will also be seeing if the -force option reveals anything useful elsewhere!

Powershell 2 Try / Catch Exceptions Powershell 2 has a new error handling function in Try / Catch.  The official help file for full details on how to run the command can be found here .  The part I have been looking into is how to define the exceptions which led me to a page on MSDN which lists the inheretance of the class system.exception  - essentially the values allowed in the Catch part of the Try / Catch.  Adding this page to links!