Remove HTML Tags from a PowerShell string or Variable

Scenario:  A variable stores a value that has HTML tags.  You wish to remove all the HTML tags from the variable but keep the content.

Example:   Running the following will store the internal message of Out of Office in the variable $1.

$1 = (Get-mailboxautoreplyconfiguration steve).internalmessage

When displaying $1, it looks like this:

<div class=”BodyFragment”>
<font size=”2″><span style=”font-size:10pt;”><div class=”PlainText”>Steve has left the building. He is never coming back .<br>
</div></span></font>
</div>

Scriptlet:

$1 = $1 -replace ‘<[^>]+>’,”

When displaying $1, it will now look like this:

Steve has left the building. He is never coming back.