PowerShell - How to Get File Creation Date

Very often System administrator has to work with file and folder operations to get file creation date timestamp, filename to extract all information in CSV based on filter criteria.

I love working with PowerShell scripts as tasks easily get done in no time. Using PowerShell to get file creation date format, the filename can be easily retrieved.

To get file creation date in PowerShell, use the PowerShell Get-ChildItem cmdlet. Get-ChildItem is used to gets items or child items in one or more specified locations.

PowerShell Get file creation date format

In this article, I will explain about get file creation date, get files created today using PowerShell.

Table of Contents hide

1 PowerShell Get File Creation TimeStamp

2 PowerShell Get Files Created Today

3 PowerShell – Get all Files with Creation Date

4 PowerShell Get File Creation Date by extension

5 Get Files Count Created Today

6 Conclusion

PowerShell Get File Creation TimeStamp

To get file date timestamp in PowerShell, use Get-ChildItem cmdlet. Run below command

Get-ChildItem -Path D:\PowerShell\ActiveDirectoryGroupList.csv | select Name,CreationTime

In the above PowerShell script, Get-ChildItem get file object using specified location -Path and pass the output to the second command.

Second command select file Name and file CreationTime properties and print it on PowerShell console as below

Name                         CreationTime
----                         ------------
ActiveDirectoryGroupList.csv 04-10-2020 14:40:07

Cool Tip: How to use Get-Date to get current date time in PowerShell!

PowerShell Get Files Created Today

To get files created today using PowerShell, use the Get-ChildItem cmdlet to get files and compare file creation date with today date. Run below command

Get-ChildItem -File | Where-Object {$_.CreationTime -gt (Get-Date).Date}

In the above PowerShell script to get files created today, the first command gets file object in the current directory and passes the output to the second command.

The second command compares file CreationTime greater than today’s date (Get-Date) and get files created today and prints output on the console.

    Directory: D:\PowerShell


Mode          LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----       24-07-2021     20:40   46 GetFileProperties-Assignment.txt

PowerShell – Get all Files with Creation Date

To get all files with creation date-time in PowerShell in descending order as per creation date timestamp, use the below command

Get-ChildItem -File | select Name,CreationTime | sort CreationTime -descending

In the above PowerShell command, the first command get file objects in current directory and pass output to the second command.

The second command selects file name and file creation time and passes the output to the third command.

Third command sort file objects descending by their creation time to get the latest file created on top of the list and print list of files on console as below

Name                             CreationTime
----                             ------------
GetFileProperties-Assignment.txt 24-07-2021 20:39:42
print-spooler-service.ps1        03-07-2021 17:01:55
comppingstatus.csv               24-10-2020 20:03:35
complist.txt                     24-10-2020 19:15:39
vscode-docker-master.zip         06-10-2020 18:08:39
ActiveDirectoryGroupList.csv     04-10-2020 14:40:07
Employee.xlsx                    04-10-2020 12:24:42

PowerShell Get File Creation Date by extension

To find files creation date by file extension, use PowerShell Get-ChildItem cmdlet to get file object and apply extension filter to select file only.

Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse| Where {$_.Extension -eq ".txt"} | select Name,CreationTime

In the above PowerShell Get-ChildItem command, the first command gets file objects recursively through folders and subfolders and passes the output to the second command.

Second command search for file extension equal to .txt and gets only *.txt file objects and pass output to the third command.

The third command selects file name and file creation date time and prints it on the console.

Cool Tip: How to find large size files in PowerShell!

Get Files Count Created Today

To get files count created today, run below PowerShell command

(Get-ChildItem -File | Where-Object {$_.CreationTime -gt (Get-Date).Date} | Measure-Object).Count

In the above PowerShell script, the Get-ChildItem cmdlet gets file object and passes it to the second command.

The second command compares file creation date time with today’s date and returns file objects to the third command.

Third command Measure-Object performs the calculation over file objects and gets file count created today.

Cool Tip: How to delete file if exists in PowerShell!

Conclusion

I hope the above article guides you to effectively use the PowerShell Get-ChildItem cmdlet to get file creation date or find files created today.

You can find more topics about PowerShell Active Directory commands and PowerShell basics on the ShellGeek home page.

PowerShell – How to Get File Creation Date