What is your preferred import format and why?

Question

Just curious as to what people like to use for importing information into PowerShell. It obviously depends on the format of the information, like lists, single text fields and lists of lists.
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Answer 1

Thanks, Fred, this is actually for a new user script. I recently migrated our old new user script from VB to Powershell and things seem to be working ok with it, but it's time to expand it a bit and do automatic group provisioning. Each department is going
to send me a list of AD groups each new user should be added to for file/folder access and security and I was wondering the best format for those lists to be in. I was personally thinking have each list be a separate "text" file with each group on
a separate line and just import them as CSVs. What do you think?
Thanks.
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That is not a CSV.  THe usual and easiest method is to have thembuild an Excel Workbook with users listed by group:
Example:
UserID, Group
jsmith, users1
jsmith, users2
ljones, users1
ljones,users4
This would be easiest to loop through and should be easy to build.  THis would be a SCSV or can be read directly out of an Excel WB.
If you want simple text then forget CSV
Use this:
jsmith, group, group2, group3
Now read oneline
and split
Get-Content usergroups.txt |
      $userID,$groups = $_ -split ','
      # process user
Now you have the userid and an array of groups.
\_(ツ)_/