Searching for Files in Nested Directories

Sometimes I need more fine grained control over searching for files in nested directories than the "-recurse" option for Get-ChildItem provides or I don't want to write some extremely long piped command to achieve the desired result. Below is a code snippet that is a good jumping off point to achieving that goal. This snippet will search the C: drive for Office documents and text files and output them to a comma separated value file. You could swap the local path to a UNC path and search a network share.

Function Search-NestedDirectory($path,$files) {
 foreach($childItem in (Get-ChildItem -literalPath $path -force | Sort-Object -property FullName)) {
  if($childItem.PSIsContainer -eq "True") {
   Write-Host ("Scanning: " + $childItem.FullName) -foregroundColor Green
   if($files.count -ge 1) {
    Write-Host ("Files Found: " + $files.count)
   }
   $files = Search-NestedDirectory $childItem.FullName @($files)
  } elseif($childItem.Extension -eq ".xls" -or $childItem.Extension -eq ".doc" -or $childItem.Extension -eq ".ppt" -or $childItem.Extension -eq ".txt") {
   $file = New-Object -typeName PSObject
   Add-Member -inputObject $file -type NoteProperty -name "path" -value $childItem.FullName
   Add-Member -inputObject $file -type NoteProperty -name "name" -value $childItem.Name
   Add-Member -inputObject $file -type NoteProperty -name "type" -value $childItem.Extension
   Add-Member -inputObject $file -type NoteProperty -name "bytes" -value $childItem.Length
   Add-Member -inputObject $file -type NoteProperty -name "creationTime" -value ($childItem.CreationTime).ToString()
   $files += $file
  }
 }
 return $files
}

$files = Search-NestedDirectory "C:\" @()

$files | Export-Csv -path "files.csv" -noTypeInformation