Powershellnewbie

Hello,

I have a very similar issue that is fairly straight forward with a batch file, but I would like to learn a simpler cleaner version with Powershell.

We have text files that look like this -

johndoe@abccompany.com,janedoe@abcco...abccompany.com,

etc.

all on one line of text. We want to just strip out the username (everything before the @ symbol) and nothing more then put them into a new text file 1 per line. (or to excel, since Powershell can do this)
The problem that I have been encountering is that when I try something like this -

$a = Get-Content ("\\network location\long_names.txt")
$b = $a.split('@')

I get a result that looks like this -

johndoe
abccompany.com,janedoe
abccompany.com,xyzuser
abccompany.com,somebody

etc.

Is there a way to only get the username and put it into new file with one username per line?

I am very new to PowerShell but am starting a 20 hour course, so hopefully I'll know more soon. Any help would be appreciated. We have already accomplished this with a batch file that we wrote up in 30 mins or so, but it would be nice to see these real world examples able to be accomplished with Powershell.

Thanks!