Powershell - Downloading file from website

Use WebClient class instead:

$webClient = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
$webClient.Credentials = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential "username", "password"
$data = $webClient.DownloadData($url)
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllBytes($destination, $data)
$webClient.Dispose()

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Hi Piotr,

I tried similar code earlier but its not working. I get the below error
"The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized."

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$source = "https://share.mycompany.com/sites/department/SomeExcelFile.xlsx"
$destination = "c:\temp\SomeExcelFile.xlsx"
$user = user_name
$pwd = password
$wc = new-object System.Net.WebClient

$wc.UseDefaultCredentials = $true


$credCache = new-object System.Net.CredentialCache
$creds = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential($user,$pwd)
$credCache.Add($source, "Basic", $creds)
$wc.Credentials = $credCache
$browser = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
$browser.Proxy.Credentials =[System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultNetworkCredentials

$wc.Headers.Add("X-FORMS_BASED_AUTH_ACCEPTED", "f")
$wc.DownloadFile($source, $destination)

While it's not clear whether you did use my code or your sample. But... There might be multiple reasons:

• you provided bad user name or password
• you did not specify domain in credentials
• you have some proxy between you and the server
• you actually did not have access to the fie

Run this one-liner and check the results:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://share.mycompany.com/sites/department/SomeExcelFile.xlsx" -Credential (Get-Credential)

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Hi Piotr,

Thank you for the quick response. The credentials work fine when I try the website manually and without any domain details. The credentials also work fine for the initial code I placed in my question.

I tried the below code, but I got the below error message.

$site = "https://share.mycompany.com/sites/department/SomeExcelFile.xlsx"
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $site -Proxy 'http://proxyserver:8080' -ProxyUseDefaultCredentials  (Get-Credential)

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Error message:
Invoke-WebRequest : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'System.Management.Automation.PSCredential'.

However, when I try this, I do not have any issues. Please advice

$site = "https://www.google.com/"
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $site -Proxy 'http://proxyserver:8080' -ProxyUseDefaultCredentials 

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You are missing "credential" parameter in Invoke-WebRequest.

Should be:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $site -Proxy 'http://proxyserver:8080' -ProxyUseDefaultCredentials  -Credential (Get-Credential)

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not:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $site -Proxy 'http://proxyserver:8080' -ProxyUseDefaultCredentials  (Get-Credential)

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Hello Piotr,

I tried the following code and I got the StatusCode response ‘200’.

$cred = (Get-Credential)
$site = "https://share.mycompany.com/sites/department/SomeExcelFile.xlsx"
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $site -Proxy 'http://proxyserver:8080' -ProxyUseDefaultCredentials -Credential $cred

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However, when I try the below, I did find ‘excel.xlsx’ file in the destination. However,when I tied to open the file, Excel was throwing the error that it cannot open the file as its in ‘unrecognized’ format. When I open the file in ‘notepad’, it was a bunch of HTML code. What could be the issue? Thank you.

  Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $site -Proxy 'http://proxyserver:8080'  -ProxyUseDefaultCredentials -Credential $cred -OutFile c:\temp\excel.xlsx

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That's closer. That means that you succesfully provided URL and connected to the server. The HTML code is probably 'Access denied' page (you may confirm this first). If so - it is very likely that you will be able to run this command and get the results:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://share.mycompany.com/sites/department/_api/web/currentuser"
  -Proxy 'http://proxyserver:8080'  -ProxyUseDefaultCredentials -Credential (Get-Credential) -OutFile c:\temp\response.txt

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If you get "Invoke-WebRequest : The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized." it means that the account does not have any access to the site. If the user has at least limited access to site (that means user has access to some list or item inside site) - you get the results. Check the results and share your thoughts.

Hi Piotr,

I ran the code you gave me. I got the response.txt file. Its exactly the same file I got earlier when I used the below cmdlet to extract the excel file.
  Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $site -Proxy 'http://proxyserver:8080'  -ProxyUseDefaultCredentials -Credential $cred -OutFile c:\temp\excel.xlsx

I saw the below lines in the HTML code that I got in the response. I see that ‘active scripting’ is already enabled on my machine. Not sure why this complaining. Thank you.

“We're sorry, but javascript has not been enabled on your browser. Please enable javascript before returning to the site.”