Often you may want to use PowerShell to convert a text file to a CSV file.
You can use the following basic syntax to do so:
Import-Csv players.txt -delimiter " " | Export-Csv players_new.csv -NoType
This particular example converts the text file named players.txt to a CSV file named players_new.csv.
Here is how this code works:
- First, we use the Import-Csv cmdlet to import the text file as a “CSV” file with the delimiter being spaces.
- Next, we use the Export-Csv cmdlet to export this file to a new CSV file.
- We use the parameter -NoType to specify that no #TYPE information should be displayed as the first line of the exported CSV file.
Note that we used the -delimiter parameter to specify that the delimiter of the text file is a space but you can also specify any other delimiter that you’d like such as a tab, a | symbol, etc.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: How to Convert Text File to CSV File Using PowerShell
Suppose that we have a text file named players.txt in our current directory that contains information about various basketball players.
We can use the Get-Content cmdlet to view the contents of this file:
We can see that the text file uses single spaces to separate the values in each row.
We can use the following syntax to convert this text file to a CSV file named players_new.csv:
Import-Csv players.txt -delimiter " " | Export-Csv players_new.csv -NoType
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that when we use the Get-Content cmdlet to view the contents of the players_new.csv file we can see that the content from the text file has been successfully converted to comma separated values in a new CSV file.
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the Export-Csv cmdlet in PowerShell here.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
PowerShell: How to List Files in Directory by Date
PowerShell: How to Get Most Recently Modified File in Directory
PowerShell: How to List All Files in Directory to Text File
PowerShell: How to Delete All Files with Specific Extension
