This can also be done a line at a time in the PowerShell command line REPL (Read Eval Print Loop). Meaning, you can create different arrays and multidimensional arrays at the command line and then type and call the Excel functions.

Plus, these are only 4 of the many Excel functions available.

If you want to find out the other Excel math functions available, type this line at the command line (run the first three lines of code up to the WorksheetFunction first):

$wf | Get-Member -MemberType method | Out-GridView

# Calling Excel Math Functions From PowerShell            

$xl        = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$xlprocess = Get-Process excel            

$wf   = $xl.WorksheetFunction
$data = 1,2,3,4
$m    = ((1,2,3),(4,5,6),(7,8,9))            

Write-Host -ForegroundColor green Median
$wf.Median($data)            

Write-Host -ForegroundColor green StDev
$wf.StDev($data)            

Write-Host -ForegroundColor green Var
$wf.Var($data)            

Write-Host -ForegroundColor green MInverse
$wf.MInverse($m)            

$xl.quit()
$xlprocess | kill

# Results
Median
2.5
StDev
1.29099444873581
Var
1.66666666666667
MInverse
-4.5035996273705E+15
9.00719925474099E+15
-4.5035996273705E+15
9.007199254741E+15
-1.8014398509482E+16
9.00719925474099E+15
-4.5035996273705E+15
9.00719925474099E+15
-4.5035996273705E+15

Grab the Code

I put the code up on my GitHub PowerShell Repository.

My talk was on PowerShell for .NET Developers. Here is a recording I did on that topic for Microsoft Channel 9 geekSpeak.

The attendees were great. Of the 50+, all heard about PowerShell and a few were using it in Production.

The questions went deep too:

• Can you embed PowerShell in a C# app?
• How to Host PowerShell in a WPF Application
• Does it work with OData?
• PowerShell WPK NetFlix Viewer Using Microsoft’s OData
• OData PowerShell Explorer
• Can you automate Excel with PowerShell?
• PowerShell Out-ExcelPivotTable – Quickly Create Pivot Tables in Microsoft Excel
• and more…

Thanks to NYC Code Camp organizers, sponsors and volunteers who put in an amazing effort to make these events happen.

 TechEd2010 starts this week down in New Orleans. There are over 30 sessions on using PowerShell.

PowerShell Sessions – Grouped By Track

Links

• Chad Miller talks about PowerShell Custom Shells relating to SQL Server in The Truth about SQLPS and PowerShell V2. It is a good walk through on shells and explanation of sqlps
• James Truher was a Program Manager on the PowerShell team in the early days. He has some nice chewy techniques in this post More and more with management packs.
• Here is a neat PowerShell trick using Invoke-Item to open multiple files with the corresponding applications
• Using the Windows Search Index to Find Specific Files is both useful and shows another usage of the ComObject parameter with the New-Object cmdlet
• In Beyond Export-Csv: Export-Xls LucD exports data directly to Excel
• Here is another Excel PowerShell integration script PowerShell Out-ExcelPivotTable – Quickly Create Pivot Tables in Microsoft Excel

Excel 2010 makes is simple to create sparklines. From the insert tab on the ribbon select the type of sparkline you want.

The Create Sparklines window is where you specify the data to display and the location where you want.

Sparklines

Sparklines have few options that allow customization.

Here are three types of sparklines based on the same data.

This innovation is accomplished using MCE (Markup Compatibility and Extensibility).

The very things that make casual users more productive can hamper power users

He adds

You can get more done at the command line for most development chores than you can through a graphical interface

He was on a project that required opening and updating several spreadsheets on a regular basis. He took a few minutes and wrote a Ruby script to do it.

Even though it didn’t take long to open the files by hand, the little time it took was still a waste of time, so I automated it

The PowerShell Version

Open-XLWB

DailyLogs

Result

For ISE

In the PowerShell Integrated Scripting environment you can launch DailyLogs from the command pane.

Note

Software development has lots of obvious automation targets: builds, continuous integration and documentation. There are less obvious but no less valuable ways to automate development chores

PowerShell is an automation platform, automation platform, automation platform (quote from Jeffrey Snover). Let the automating begin.

Downloads

Place the two scripts in a folder that is in your path.

Bradley requested two features. How to save the pivot table to a file and close excel.

Download the new scripts below and here is how to use it.

$data | .\Out-ExcelPivotTable -saveAs "$pwd\data.xls" -autoCloseXl

Thanks for the feature request Bradley.

The Data – People.csv

Use Import-Csv and type the data with Select

Create the Excel Pivot Table

$people | .\Out-ExcelPivotTable

The easiest way to get a Pivot Table.

Out-ExcelPivotTable inspects the piped data, sets up the numeric properties as data fields and string properties as row fields (nested).

$people | .\Out-ExcelPivotTable name dept salary

Same data.

You control what goes in the different pivot fields. Row (name), Column (dept) and Data (salary).

$people | .\Out-ExcelPivotTable -values YearsEmployeed

You control the pivot data field with the –values parameter letting  Out-ExcelPivotTable do the rest.

Name is nested in Department.

ToDo

• Set up Out-ExcelPivotTable parameters to take arrays
• Formatting of value fields
• Naming of Row and Column Labels
• Enable Types of aggregates for Value field
• Improve data layout performance

I have only tried this on the latest version of Excel.

Download It

You can use them in PowerShell too!

You need to have the F# September CTP installed here.

This script reads Excel spreadsheets.

It takes two parameters

The Excel file name and an ‘sql command’.

The provider used in the connection treats the worksheet like a database.

Example WorkSheet

This sheet is named Sheet1. You access the data with an sql command.

Using Excel data in calculations

The previous example printed the contents of the Excel sheet. Here is how you can programmatically work with the data.

Using the script, the columns StandardHours and Wage were extracted from the spreadsheet. Then, using the PowerShell ForEach, looped through and the Pay calculated.

Wrapping up

This post outlines how easy it is to access Excel spreadsheets with PowerShell.

Upcoming posts will use the Get-ExcelData script to

• Do code generation
• Simulate FIT (Framework for Integrated Test)
• Write data to a spreadsheet
• Create a spreadsheet on the fly
• Access Excel Named Ranges

Downloads

Download the script and test spreadsheet here.

Links

The Get-ExcelData script is a pared down version of Lee Holmes Invoke-SqlCommand.

You can find it in his upcoming book Windows PowerShell: The Definitive Guide.