PowerShell Get-Date Minus 1 Day

When working with PowerShell scripts, you might encounter situations where you need to manipulate dates, such as finding yesterday’s date or subtracting a day from a specific date. PowerShell’s Get-Date cmdlet is a versatile tool that can help you easily handle such date operations. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to use Get-Date to subtract one day from the current date or a specified date. This is a complete tutorial on “PowerShell Get-Date Minus 1 Day“.

To subtract one day from the current date in PowerShell, users utilize the Get-Date cmdlet in combination with the AddDays() method. This method is part of the DateTime object acquired from Get-Date, which represents date and time. AddDays() takes one parameter: the number of days to add to the instance of the date. By specifying a negative number, users effectively subtract days from the date in question.

Table of Contents

Understanding PowerShell Get-Date

First, let’s understand the Get-Date cmdlet. Get-Date is a built-in PowerShell cmdlet that retrieves the current date and time. It can also be used to create and manipulate DateTime objects, which represent dates and times.

To subtract one day from today’s date, you can use the AddDays() method in PowerShell with Get-Date. This method is available on any DateTime object, which you can get by using Get-Date. Here’s how you can get yesterday’s date:

$yesterday = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)
Write-Host "Yesterday's date was: $yesterday"

In this example, (Get-Date) retrieves the current date and time. The .AddDays(-1) method subtracts one day, and the result is stored in the $yesterday variable. The Write-Host cmdlet then outputs the result to the console.

You can see the output in the screenshot below after I executed the script using VS Code.

If you want to write the script for “PowerShell get-date minus 1 day” with a try-catch block, then you can write the script below.

try {
  $yesterday = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)
} catch {
  Write-Error "An error occurred calculating yesterday's date."
}

Similarly, when subtracting days across a daylight saving change, one should verify the time has been adjusted correctly. An if statement can validate this adjustment:

$yesterday = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)
if ($yesterday.IsDaylightSavingTime() -ne (Get-Date).IsDaylightSavingTime()) {
  Write-Output "Daylight saving time adjustment may be required."
}

Subtracting One Day from a Specific Date in PowerShell

You may also want to subtract a day from a date that is not today. To do this, you first need to create a DateTime object for the specific date. You can then call the AddDays() method with -1 as the parameter to subtract a day. Here’s an example and the PowerShell script:

# Create a DateTime object for a specific date
$specificDate = Get-Date '2024-01-04'

# Subtract one day from the specified date
$dayBeforeSpecificDate = $specificDate.AddDays(-1)

Write-Host "One day before $specificDate was: $dayBeforeSpecificDate"

In this code, Get-Date '2024-01-04' creates a DateTime object for January 4, 2024. The AddDays(-1) method subtracts one day, and the result is output to the console.

Here is the screenshot for the output:

Conclusion

Subtracting a day from a date in PowerShell is straightforward with the Get-Date cmdlet and the AddDays() method. Whether you’re dealing with today’s date or a specific date, you can perform date arithmetic easily and efficiently.

In this PowerShell tutorial, I have explained how to work with PowerShell get-date minus 1 day with examples.