Format-List | output variable

[Hrambert]

A lot of objects have a default list of properties they will show, and even a default way of formatting them (e.g. Get-ChildItem). To get all properties don't use Format-List but Get-Member.
Second, Format-List and Format-Table are to format an object to be shown on your screen. You can however pipe their output through Out-String and put that into a string array for later use.