How to write a string of text in multiple colors in PowerShell

One of the features about PowerShell that drew my attention away from VBScript many years ago was PowerShell’s ability to output information in multiple colors. When you use Write-Host to display text on the screen, you also get to use the ForegroundColor and BackgroundColor parameters to change the font colors for that line of text.

What if you wanted to have a line of text with different colors? To do this you will need to to use several Write-Host lines. The problem with that is that you will have your text on multiple lines. In the Help file for Write-Host, I noticed a parameter NoNewLine that will not put a return at the end of the text. Your next Write-Host statement will appear on the same line. Take a look at the code below and the output.

Write-host "This is some" -ForegroundColor Green -NoNewline
Write-Host "string" -ForegroundColor Red -BackgroundColor DarkRed -NoNewline
Write-Host "in different" -ForegroundColor Gray -BackgroundColor DarkYellow -NoNewline
Write-Host "Colors"

Comments

Unknown said…

Thanks for posting this. -nonewline is what I needed!

July 24, 2014 at 11:34 AM

Erik said…

Thanks...

September 14, 2015 at 11:36 AM

Sticky Key problem between Windows Server 2012 and LogMeIn

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Where did a User’s Account Get Locked Out?

Updated: May 15, 2015 When this article was originally published, two extra carriage returns were add causing the code to malfunction. The code below is correct. My client for this week’s PowerShell class had a really interesting question. They needed to know where an account is being locked out at. OK, interesting. Apparently users hop around clients and forget to log off, leading to eventual lock out of their accounts. The accounts can be unlocked, but are then relocked after Active Directory replication. This problem is solved in two parts. The first one is to modify the event auditing on the network. The second part is resolved with PowerShell. The first part involves creating a group policy that will encompass your Domain Controllers. In this GPO, make these changes. Expand Computer Configuration \ Policies \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Advanced Audit Policy Configuration \ Audit Policies \ Account Management Double click User Account Management C...

Jason Yoder, MCT

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