I needed to do this in PowerShell running on a server without MS Office applications installed. The trick, as suggested above, is to peek inside the office file and examine the embedded xml files within.
Here's a function that runs like a cmdlet, meaning you can simply save the script in your PowerShell scripts directory and call the function from any other PowerShell script.
[CmdletBinding()]
[OutputType([System.Collections.Hashtable])]
Param
(
[Parameter(Position=0,
Mandatory=$false,
HelpMessage="Enter the full path name of the document")]
[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
[String] $DocumentFullPathName='e:\temp\supplier_List.xlsx',
[Parameter(Position=1,
Mandatory=$false,
HelpMessage="Enter the Office properties semi-colon delimited")]
[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
[String] $OfficeProperties='dcterms:created; dcterms:modified ;cp:lastModifiedBy;dc:creator'
)
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.FileSystem
function Unzip
{
param([string]$zipfile, [string]$outpath)
[System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::ExtractToDirectory($zipfile, $outpath) *>$null
}
$OfficeProperties = $OfficeProperties.replace(' ','')
$zipDirectoryName = $env:TEMP + "\" + "TempZip"
# delete the zip directory if present
remove-item $zipDirectoryName -force -recurse -ErrorAction Ignore | out-null
# create the zip directory
New-Item -ItemType directory -Path $zipDirectoryName | out-null
# Unzip the files -- i.e. extract the xml files embedded within the MS Office document
unzip $DocumentFullPathName $zipDirectoryName
# get the docProps\core.xml file as [xml]
$coreXmlName = $zipDirectoryName + "\docProps\core.xml"
[xml]$coreXml = get-content -path $coreXmlName
# create an array of the requested properties
$requiredProperties = $OfficeProperties -split ";"
# create a hashtable to return the values
$docProperties = @{}
# Now look for each requested property
foreach($requiredProperty in $requiredProperties)
{
# We will be lazy and ignore the namespaces. We need the local name only
$localName = $requiredProperty -split ":"
$localName = $localName[1]
# Use XPath to fetch the node for this property
$thisNode = $coreXml.coreProperties.SelectSingleNode("*[local-name(.) = '$localName']")
if($thisNode -eq $null)
{
# To the hashtable, add the requested property name and its value -- null in this case
$docProperties.Add($RequiredProperty, $null)
}
else
{
# To the hashtable, add the requested property name and its value
$docProperties.Add($RequiredProperty, $thisNode.innerText)
}
}
#clean up
remove-item $zipDirectoryName -force -recurse
# return the properties hashtable. To do this, just write the object to the output stream
$docProperties