PowerShell provides a number of ways to format Date and Time thanks to its ability to tap into the .NET Framework.
By default, Get-Date returns the full date and time (e.g Sunday, January 8, 2017 11:00:00 AM) based on your system culture settings.
What if you want just the numeric representation of this result (e.g. 2017-01-08) or only the year (e.g. 2017) for use in some custom scripting?
This article shows you how you can fine-tune Get-Date using parameters to get the exact results that you want. Some practical examples will also be shown.
The magic behind formatting the Get-Date result is the -format parameter.
Quick Formatting
Here is a handy chart that summarizes what you can specify with the -format parameter.
| Specifier | Format | Sample Result |
| d | ShortDatePattern | 01/08/2017 |
| D | LongDatePattern | Sunday, January 8, 2017 |
| f | Full date and time (long date and short time) | Sunday, January 8, 2017 11:00 AM |
| F | FullDateTimePattern (long date and long time with seconds) | Sunday, January 8, 2017 11:00:00 AM |
| g | General (short date and short time) | 1/8/2017 11:00 AM |
| G | General (short date and long time with seconds) | 1/8/2017 11:00:24 AM |
| m, M | MonthDayPattern | January 8 |
| o | Round-trip date/time pattern | 2017-01-08T11:00:00.4360943-05:00 |
| r, R | RFC1123Pattern | Sun, 01 Jan 2017 11:00:00 GMT |
| s | SortableDateTimePattern (based on ISO 8601) using local time | 2017-01-08T11:00:00 |
| t | ShortTimePattern | 11:00 AM |
| T | LongTimePattern | 11:00:00 AM |
| u | UniversalSortableDateTimePattern using the format for universal time display | 2017-01-08 11:00:00Z |
| U | Full date and time (long date and long time) using universal time | Sunday, January 8, 2017 11:00:00 AM |
| y, Y | YearMonthPattern | January 2017 |
Example 1: ShortDatePattern
Get-Date -format d
Result:
1/8/2017
Example 2: LongDatePattern
Get-Date -format D
Result:
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Advanced Formatting
The chart above shows you the built-in Date/Time formats. If you want something even more customized, you can use the following custom specifiers with the -format parameter.
| Specifier | Description |
| d. %d | The day of the month. Single-digit days will not have a leading zero. Specify “%d” if the format pattern is not combined with other format patterns. |
| dd | The day of the month. Single-digit days will have a leading zero. |
| ddd | The abbreviated name of the day of the week. |
| dddd | The full name of the day of the week, as defined in DayNames. |
| h, %h | The hour in a 12-hour clock. Single-digit hours will not have a leading zero. Specify “%h” if the format pattern is not combined with other format patterns. |
| hh | The hour in a 12-hour clock. Single-digit hours will have a leading zero. |
| H, %H | The hour in a 24-hour clock. Single-digit hours will not have a leading zero. Specify “%H” if the format pattern is not combined with other format patterns. |
| HH | The hour in a 24-hour clock. Single-digit hours will have a leading zero. |
| m, %m | The minute. Single-digit minutes will not have a leading zero. Specify “%m” if the format pattern is not combined with other format patterns. |
| mm | The minute. Single-digit minutes will have a leading zero. |
| M, %M | The numeric month. Single-digit months will not have a leading zero. Specify “%M” if the format pattern is not combined with other format patterns. |
| MM | The numeric month. Single-digit months will have a leading zero. |
| MMM | The abbreviated name of the month, as defined in AbbreviatedMonthNames. |
| MMMM | The full name of the month, as defined in MonthNames. |
| s, %s | The second. Single-digit seconds will not have a leading zero. Specify “%s” if the format pattern is not combined with other format patterns. |
| ss | The second. Single-digit seconds will have a leading zero. |
| t, %t | The first character in the AM/PM designator defined in AMDesignator or PMDesignator, if any. Specify “%t” if the format pattern is not combined with other format patterns. |
| tt | The AM/PM designator defined in AMDesignator or PMDesignator, if any. |
| y, %y | The year without the century. If the year without the century is less than 10, the year is displayed with no leading zero. Specify “%y” if the format pattern is not combined with other format patterns. |
| yy | The year without the century. If the year without the century is less than 10, the year is displayed with a leading zero. |
| yyy | The year in three digits. If the year is less than 100, the year is displayed with a leading zero. |
| yyyy | The year in four or five digits (depending on the calendar used), including the century. Will pad with leading zeroes to get four digits. Thai Buddhist and Korean calendars both have five digit years; users selecting the “yyyy” pattern will see all five digits without leading zeros for calendars that have five digits. Exception: the Japanese and Taiwan calendars always behave as if “yy” was selected. |
| %c | Where c is a format pattern if used alone. That is, to use format pattern “d”, “f”, “F”, “h”, “m”, “s”, “t”, “y”, “z”, “H”, or “M” by itself, specify “%d”, “%f”, “%F”, “%h”, “%m”, “%s”, “%t”, “%y”, “%z”, “%H”, or “%M”. The “%” character can be omitted if the format pattern is combined with literal characters or other format patterns. |
| c | Where c is any character. Displays the character literally. To display the backslash character, use “\”. |
Example 3: MMM d, yyyy @ HH:MM tt
Get-Date -format "MMM d, yyyy @ HH:MM tt"
Result:
Jan 8, 2017 @ 11:00 AM
Example 4: Generate a filename with timestamp
Get-Date -format "Report_yyyyMMdd.txt"
Result:
Report_20170108.txt
Lots of cool possibilities with the PowerShell Get-Date command.
Give it a try!
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