Special characters in PowerShell

Question

I am trying to work with PowerShell and have it output the copyright character into a Microsoft Word document. For example, the code listed below is what I am trying to use and it is not working.

$SummaryPara.Range.Text = "© "
$SummaryPara.Range.Text = "Get-Date -Format yyyy"
$SummaryPara.Range.Text = " - Name of Org Here "
$SummaryPara.Range.InsertParagraphAfter()

Do I need to use the Alt + 0169 sequence somehow?

I am not sure what I am doing wrong since the following code seems to work:

$selection.TypeParagraph()
$selection.TypeText("© ")
$selection.TypeText((Get-Date -Format yyyy))
$selection.TypeText(" - Name of Org Here ")
$selection.TypeParagraph()

How can I make this work for both the copyright character and other similar special characters?

Answer 1

There are a few problems here. I'll list those and address each:

1. You can get any character you need by casting the Unicode representation to a char. In this case

   [char]0x00A9
   

2. You assign a new value to $SummaryPara.Range.Text three times. So, you are overwriting the previous value each time, instead of concatenating ('+' operator), which I think is what you were trying to do.

3. You are trying to use the cmdlet Get-Date, but since you have quoted it, you will end up with the literal string "Get-Date -Format yyyy", instead of the result of the cmdlet.

Putting it all together, I think you want something like this:

$word = New-Object -ComObject Word.Application
$doc = $word.Documents.Add()
$SummaryPara = $doc.Content.Paragraphs.Add()
$SummaryPara.Range.Text = [char]0x00A9 + ($date = Get-Date -Format yyyy) + " - Name of Org Here "
$word.Visible = $true