Exporting CSV files with your default delimiter

Normally when you export a csv file in powershell it uses the default delimiter comma, unless you use the -delimiter parameter to use another delimiter.

Depending on your language settings tools like Excel use a different delimiter. You can find these settings in your region/language settings -> Formats -> additional settings. Here is a field with “List seperator” which shows you the list separator selected.

You also can retrieve this with the powershell command below:

[Powershell](Get-Culture).TextInfo.ListSeparator[/powershell]

Because of this and switching between servers/workstations with different language settings this can be frustrating sometimes. This is why the –useculture parameter is available

Use the list separator for the current culture as the item delimiter. The default is a comma (,).

This parameter is very useful in scripts that are being distributed to users worldwide. To find the list separator for a culture, use the following command:

export-csv -useculture

This uses your local delimiter as delimiter for your export CSV, so as soon as you doubleclick it and it opens in excel it is already correctly seperated.