SQL extract data to Excel using Powershell

I want to extract data from SQL server to a new excel file using powershell . For small data set my code works but some tables has more than 100.000 rows and this will take ages. The reason why I don’t use the utility in SQl server is because I want to extract mutilple tables. Is there a way to optimize my script to export big tables to excel? or is there another way to do this?

I’m using the following script

## ---------- Working with SQL Server ---------- ##

## - Get SQL Server Table data:
$SQLServer = 'server';
$Database = 'database';
$SqlQuery = @'   Select top 10 *   from database.dbo.table   '@;

## - Connect to SQL Server using non-SMO class 'System.Data':
$SqlConnection = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection;
$SqlConnection.ConnectionString = `
"Server = $SQLServer; Database = $Database; Integrated Security = True";

$SqlCmd = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand;
$SqlCmd.CommandText = $SqlQuery;
$SqlCmd.Connection = $SqlConnection;

## - Extract and build the SQL data object '$DataSetTable':
$SqlAdapter = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataAdapter;
$SqlAdapter.SelectCommand = $SqlCmd;
$DataSet = New-Object System.Data.DataSet;
$SqlAdapter.Fill($DataSet);
$DataSetTable = $DataSet.Tables["Table"];


## ---------- Working with Excel ---------- ##

## - Create an Excel Application instance:
$xlsObj = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application;

## - Create new Workbook and Sheet (Visible = 1 / 0 not visible)
$xlsObj.Visible = 0;
$xlsWb = $xlsobj.Workbooks.Add();
$xlsSh = $xlsWb.Worksheets.item(1);

## - Build the Excel column heading:
[Array] $getColumnNames = $DataSetTable.Columns | Select ColumnName;

## - Build column header:
[Int] $RowHeader = 1;
foreach ($ColH in $getColumnNames)
{
$xlsSh.Cells.item(1, $RowHeader).font.bold = $true;
$xlsSh.Cells.item(1, $RowHeader) = $ColH.ColumnName;
$RowHeader++;
};

## - Adding the data start in row 2 column 1:
[Int] $rowData = 2;
[Int] $colData = 1;

foreach ($rec in $DataSetTable.Rows)
{
foreach ($Coln in $getColumnNames)
{
## - Next line convert cell to be text only:
$xlsSh.Cells.NumberFormat = "@";

## - Populating columns:
$xlsSh.Cells.Item($rowData, $colData) = `
$rec.$($Coln.ColumnName).ToString();
$ColData++;
};
$rowData++; $ColData = 1;
};

## - Adjusting columns in the Excel sheet:
$xlsRng = $xlsSH.usedRange;
$xlsRng.EntireColumn.AutoFit();

## ---------- Saving file and Terminating Excel Application ---------- ##

## - Saving Excel file - if the file exist do delete then save
$xlsFile = `
"C:pathfile.xls";

if (Test-Path $xlsFile)
{
Remove-Item $xlsFile
$xlsObj.ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs($xlsFile);
}
else
{
$xlsObj.ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs($xlsFile);
};

## Quit Excel and Terminate Excel Application process:
$xlsObj.Quit(); (Get-Process Excel*) | foreach ($_) { $_.kill() };

## - End of Script - ##

Answer

There’s some simple magic to make this a lot easier, and that’s Copy/Paste. What you can do is convert your datatable to a tab delimited CSV, copy that to the clipboard, and paste it into Excel. I’ll ignore your SQL part, since you seem to have that well in hand.

## ---------- Working with Excel ---------- ##

## - Create an Excel Application instance:
$xlsObj = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application;

## - Create new Workbook and Sheet (Visible = 1 / 0 not visible)
$xlsObj.Visible = 0;
$xlsWb = $xlsobj.Workbooks.Add();
$xlsSh = $xlsWb.Worksheets.item(1);

## - Copy entire table to the clipboard as tab delimited CSV
$DataSetTable | ConvertTo-Csv -NoType -Del "`t" | Clip

## - Paste table to Excel
$xlsObj.ActiveCell.PasteSpecial() | Out-Null

## - Set columns to auto-fit width
$xlsObj.ActiveSheet.UsedRange.Columns|%{$_.AutoFit()|Out-Null}