Browse for File to POSH Variable

After many months of getting tired of typing in an entire directory path when using the “Read-Host” command to import a text file or CSV file I went looking for commands to present a popup box to let me browse for a file, then have that file’s path be presented to a variable. This example shows that $file will be the file path for the file specified in the Get-FileName function.

A big thank you goes to the blog over at Sapien.com for showing me this wonderfulness 🙂

http://www.sapien.com/forums/scriptinganswers/forum_posts.asp?TID=4115

Function Get-FileName($initialDirectory)

{

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.windows.forms") |

Out-Null



$OpenFileDialog = <strong>New-Object</strong> System.Windows.Forms.OpenFileDialog

$OpenFileDialog.initialDirectory = $initialDirectory

$OpenFileDialog.Title = "PowerShell Master Says...Select File:"

$OpenFileDialog.filter = "All files (*.*)| *.*"

$OpenFileDialog.ShowDialog() | Out-Null

$OpenFileDialog.filename


} #end function Get-FileName



# *** Entry Point to Script ***

$file = Get-FileName <em>-initialDirectory</em> "c:\"