Pull all AP names from a Cisco WLC easily

How to collect AP Names from a Cisco WLC

So if you are running into this, you've likely have already worked with spreadsheets that help auto-populate commands.  It's pretty simple to create these but I'll give you a little screenshot of a basic use of this in Excel.

Put the AP name in A1 of Excel

Then create a colum with =CONCATENATE("config ap primary-base NAME-HERE  ",A1, " 192.168.1.1")

This will create the command of "config ap primary-base APNAME1 192.168.1.1"

You can then fill in A2, A3 with the rest of the names.  This is useful if you are pulling AP's from one controller to another.

This allows you to create a command list to make instant changes by cutting and pasting into SecureCRT, Putty or whatever your program of choice is.

The first area in black would be the WLC Domain name (WLC01-5520) and the second black part would be the IP (192.168.1.1) as an example.

But what if you don't have the list of AP names?  What do you do?  I've seen people in the past and many years ago - I had also started copying the names one by one from the GUI and never found a good way to pull it from the command line.

Save yourself a lot of trouble please, how?

First use config paging disable

This allows all the names to scroll without --More-- or (q)uit from from showing

Then type in show ap summary

This will then output all of the AP names on that WLC and a bought of other information.  You'd think you can then just bring this all over to Excel?  It's simple but you need to know one thing in excel to get this.

Cut and paste all of the information from the show ap summary command

Go to "text to columns" and basically press next two times and you'll then have all of the AP names in their own special column.  This is where you can copy it to an example above if you are wanting to do mass changes to APs like changing the primary controller assignments