The accepted answer is great if the type is an integer, but a lot of ids wind up being typed as a string to prevent losing leading zeros.  You can format a string by breaking it up into pieces with `Substring` and make it reusable by sticking it in a DisplayTemplate.

Inside `/Shared/DisplayTemplates/`, add a template named `Phone.vbhtml`:



    @ModelType String
    @If Not IsNothing(Model) AndAlso Model.Length = 10 Then
        @<span>@String.Format("({0}) {1}-{2}",
                  Model.Substring(0, 3),
                  Model.Substring(3, 3),
                  Model.Substring(6, 4))</span>
    Else
        @Model
    End If

You can invoke this in a couple ways:

1. Just annotate the property on your model with a data type of the same name:

    
    
        <DataType("Phone")> _
        Public Property Phone As String

   And then call using a simple `DisplayFor`:

    
    
         @Html.DisplayFor(Function(model) model.Phone)

2. Alternatively, you can specify the DisplayTemplate you'd like to use by name:

    
    
         @Html.DisplayFor(Function(model) model.VimsOrg.Phone, "Phone")

Is there a way I can use the `DisplayFormat` attribute on a view model property to apply a `DataFormatString` format for a social security number or a phone number?  I know I could do this with javascript, but would prefer to have the model handle it, if possible.

    [DisplayFormat(ApplyFormatInEditMode = true, DataFormatString = "???????")]
    public string Ssn { get; set; }



DisplayFormat.DataFormatString for a phone number or social security number

Yep, it is possible.

Using `MacroButton` with `NoMacro` merely serves to conveniently highlight the entire text area with a single click.  As with any highlighted object in word, when you start typing, it deletes the selected portion and formats the new text based on the style of the leftmost element (which in this case is the field itself - even though it's not displayed).  

To 'change' the styles, simply start off by highlighting the entire field and formatting however you'd like the result to end up. Then highlight just the text portion and format however you'd like the prompt to display.

When in edit mode, it should look like this:

![screenshot][screenshot]

[screenshot]: http://i.imgur.com/s0q5CPU.png

In MS word you can create a [placeholder field][placeholder field] by: 

* Inserting a new field (<kbd>Ctrl</kbd> + <kbd>F9</kbd>)   
* Typing <code>MacroButton NoMacro [<i>Enter Text Here</i>]</code> inside the brackets {}
* Then toggling it out of edit mode (<kbd>Alt</kbd> + <kbd>F9</kbd>) 

It will do this:

![screenshot][screenshot]

In my template, empty fields are highlighted in *blue*, but should turn *black* once filled in.

**Q**: Is there a way to change the font once someone has filled in a value?


[screenshot]: http://i.imgur.com/kEQD2cF.png
[placeholder field]: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/UsingMacroButton.htm

Change font when using MacroButton placeholder in MS Word

If you want trim data past a certain length and manually specify column widths, you can pass a `Width` property for each property attribute.

For example, if you wanted your data to look like this:



    Column 1    Column 2      Column 3      Column 4
    --------    --------      --------      --------
    Data        Lorem ip...   Lorem ip...   Important data


Here's the basic `Format-Table` syntax, with a list of explicit properties:



    $data | Format-Table -Property Col1, Col2, Col3, Col4 -AutoSize

Instead of just passing in the property names, we can add some [additional metadata to `Property`][1]:

    $a = @{Expression={$_.Col1}; Label="Column 1"; Width=30}, 
         @{Expression={$_.Col2}; Label="Column 2"; Width=30}, 
         @{Expression={$_.Col3}; Label="Column 3"; Width=30}, 
         @{Expression={$_.Col4}; Label="Column 4"; Width=30}
    $data | Format-Table -Property $a

**Note**: I realize this is covered at the bottom of mklement0's more complete answer, but if this is your use case and you're scrolling quickly, I hope this helps highlight this strategy at a high level

[1]: https://superuser.com/a/956308/180163

I am trying to get the last reboot time of some PCs from a list. When I use 

    foreach ($pc in $pclist) {
      Get-CimInstance -ClassName win32_operatingsystem -ComputerName $pc |
        select csname, lastbootuptime 
    }

The output comes as following.

<pre>csname       lastbootuptime
------       --------------
CONFA7-L1-1A 7/15/2016 9:55:16 AM
CONFA7-L1-1F 5/31/2016 8:51:46 AM
CONFA7-L1-1G 6/18/2016 11:09:15 AM
CONFA7-L1... 6/26/2016 5:31:31 PM
CONFA7-L3... 7/24/2016 3:48:43 PM</pre>

Which is neat, but if the PC name is long, I am unable to see the full name. 
So I pipelined `Format-Table`:

    Get-CimInstance -ClassName win32_operatingsystem -ComputerName $pc |
      select csname, lastbootuptime |
      Format-Table  -HideTableHeaders 

And this is what I get:

<pre>CONFA7-L1-1A 7/15/2016 9:55:16 AM



CONFA7-L1-1E 7/21/2016 12:58:16 PM



CONFA7-L1-1F 5/31/2016 8:51:46 AM</pre>

There are two problems here. 

1. There is no heading. If I remove `-HideTableHeaders` there will be heading for every output which is not required.

1. There is a lot of white spaces in between.

Basically I just need to get an output similar to the first one, but without truncating the full names. How can I fix these?
