How can I get the names into the $tmp variable in the same order they are displayed with a $f | ft ?

The names come into $tmp sorted

look at what property they are being sorted under when using ft, then specify a sort by that property name:

$f | gm -membertype noteproperty | sort [property_name] | select name

They aren't sorted with ft alpabetically, is there a way to pull out the order ft uses? they are shown in this order as intended

MBXs
Database
DBSize(GB)
LogFree(GB)
DBFree(GB)
ServerCount

When I run
$hdr = "html stuff here that this editor keeps converting"
$tmp = $f | gm -membertype noteproperty | select name
$tmp | %{$c=$_.name.tostring();$hdr += "more html stuff this editor is converting"}
$hdr += "more html stuff"

It comes out as
Database
DBFree(GB)
DBSize(GB)
LogFree(GB)
MBXs
ServerCount

If you're sorting the property names just put them into select-object in the order you want

$object | select Prop1,Prop2,Prop3

That negates all benefits.  I have 50 scripts I'm converting to HTML output from CSV output.  Each script builds a powershell table of output information.  If I can build the html data directly from those tables without manually specifying each tables headers then I can simply copy this html building function into each script, and as long as the starting variable, that contains the powershell table,  is the same, each script will generate HTML output.  Easy.

If I have to manually specify each headers properties, for each script, it turns into a pretty severe headache.

Format-Table(or any output like Format-List)  orders the column headers, somehow I should be able to pull the header names and order out.   Man, this is driving me crazy.  I cannot think of a way to pull this simple column header information out in the order it goes in.