Convert string to array of PSCustomObjects

I noticed the empty line separating the text blocks is not really empty, but it contains a space character.

One way of doing this is to use ConvertFrom-StringData:

$str = @"
Name        : AdtAgent
DisplayName : Microsoft Monitoring Agent Audit Forwarding
Status      : Stopped
StartType   : Disabled

Name        : AeLookupSvc
DisplayName : Application Experience
Status      : Running
StartType   : Automatic
"@ 

$result = $str -split '\r?\n\s*\r?\n' | ForEach-Object {
    # for PowerShell 7 you can use 
    # $_ | ConvertFrom-StringData -Delimiter ':'
    [PsCustomObject](($_ -replace ':', '=') | ConvertFrom-StringData)
}

$result

Output:

Status  DisplayName                                 StartType Name       
------  -----------                                 --------- ----       
Stopped Microsoft Monitoring Agent Audit Forwarding Disabled  AdtAgent   
Running Application Experience                      Automatic AeLookupSvc

This however does not keep the order of the properties if that matters, but also, if your values may contain a ':' character, this could give you bad results.

You can do this 'manually' of course like this, keeping the order and not getting confused if values have a colon character:

$result = $str -split '\r?\n\s*\r?\n' | ForEach-Object {
    $hash = [ordered]@{}
    foreach ($line in ($_ -split '\r?\n')) {
        $name, $value = ($line -split ':', 2).Trim()
        $hash[$name] = $value
    }
    # cast to PsCustomObject for output
    [PsCustomObject]$hash 
}

$result

Output:

Name        DisplayName                                 Status  StartType
----        -----------                                 ------  ---------
AdtAgent    Microsoft Monitoring Agent Audit Forwarding Stopped Disabled 
AeLookupSvc Application Experience                      Running Automatic

you can use convertfrom-stringdata commandlet

$array = (@"
Name        : AdtAgent
DisplayName : Microsoft Monitoring Agent Audit Forwarding
Status      : Stopped
StartType   : Disabled

Name        : AeLookupSvc
DisplayName : Application Experience
Status      : Running
StartType   : Automatic
"@ -split "`r`n`r`n") | ConvertFrom-StringData -Delimiter ":"

Can you obtain this data in its original from, before it got formatted like a list? If so, that may be more useful to you than converting it to text, and then back again. Thanks to @zett42 for this suggestion.

Consider the following:

$svc = Get-Service | Select-Object -property Name, Displayname, Status, StartType

Now, if you do:

$svc | Format-List

you will get text that looks like the sample you gave us.

But if you do:

$svc | gm

You will notice that this is an array of ServiceController. This may be just as useful to you as an array of PSCustomObject. Or, you may be able to convert it directly to an array of PSCustomObject, without going to text and back again.