How to Convert datetime formats using powershell

This is a pretty common question that gets asked here on StackOverflow, however, it seems most of the answers are directed towards converting a variable which stores a single date, to a formatted string.

Whereas you have an array of dates you want to convert.

I'm going to make the assumption that you have an Array of DateTime values, and not an Array of String.

For starters, there's TONS of blogs and articles about this, not to mention the documentation.

• https://devblogs.microsoft.com/scripting/formatting-date-strings-with-powershell/
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.utility/get-date

Depending on how you need to use this data there is a million different ways to do this.

Primarily, you need to learn how to perform actions against an array of objects. Using things like ForEach, ForEach-Object, Select-Object, etc. Once you learn how to use those, then the problem just becomes "how do you format a date to a string", which is all over the place on here and the rest of the internet.

Here's some examples:

# Use this to generate sample data:
$Time = 10000,9000,8000,7000,6000,5000,4000,3000,2000,1000 |
    ForEach-Object { (Get-Date).AddMinutes(-$_) }

## Various solutions:
$Time | ForEach-Object { $_.ToString('yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss') }

$Time | ForEach-Object { $_ | Get-Date -Format 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss' }
$Time | ForEach-Object { $_ | Get-Date -f 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss' }
$Time | ForEach-Object { Get-Date $_ -f 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss' }

$Time | Select-Object @{N='TimeString'; E={$_.ToString('yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss')}}

foreach ($tv in $time) { $tv.ToSTring('yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss') }

$Time.ForEach({$_.ToString('yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss')})

# Other methods submitted in comments, thanks @iRon
$Time | ForEach-Object ToString('yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss')
$Time.ForEach('ToString', 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss')

Note that this is case sensitive.

• MM - Means the two digit month value
• mm - Means the two digit day value