How to undo changes in Google Ads

Last checked against Google’s documentation on 30 September 2026.

How to undo changes in Google Ads: the short answer

Open Change history in the Campaigns menu, find the change, and click Undo in the “User / Date & Time” column. Google’s account history guide says you can undo most types of changes made in the last 30 days, and that undoing reverts the change to its previous state.

When there is no Undo, the change is older than 30 days, or the item it touched has since been removed, you reverse it by hand: change history shows the old value, and you set it back. Either way, a reversal puts the setting back. It doesn’t give you back the days in between, and it doesn’t rewind what a bid strategy learned.

Find the change, and who made it

Go to Change history within the Campaigns menu. Google’s About change history page says it lists changes to your account, campaigns and ad groups from the past two years, and shows each change on a timeline mapped to impressions, clicks, conversions, clickthrough rate and cost. That graph is the fastest way to see whether a drop started the day after a change or before it.

The page has three views in the “Change overview” tab:

• By user: the most recent changes, and who made them.
• By campaign: how many changes each campaign had over a period, with a summary of the latest.
• Performance: an overview of your results with insight annotations.

Set the date range in the upper right, then narrow the list with filters for campaign, ad group, change type (budget, bidding, keyword, status, targeting and more), user, tool, item changed and campaign experiment. Click the arrow next to a change to see its details, including the old and new values. To see results only for what changed, tick the changes and click Go to, which opens a filtered list of the affected campaigns or ad groups.

How to see who made changes in Google Ads

The User column answers it. Google says changes made in the Google Ads interface show the person’s email address. Changes from Google’s own systems appear under names like “Google Ads system”, and changes from other tools through the API show “Google Ads API” or the tool’s name. Changes from automated rules and Google Ads Editor are listed too, and the Tool filter separates them.

Two gaps to know about: change history doesn’t track password changes, and Google notes that some account-level settings changes, or changes made by Google representatives during consultations, may not be listed. For a large edit, Google recommends keeping changes under about 2,000 items so the page can show every detail.

Undo a change from change history

Once you have found the row, Google’s steps are:

1. On the change history page, find the row with the changes you want to undo.
2. Click Undo in the “User / Date & Time” column.
3. Confirm in the pop-up by clicking Undo.
4. The column should now read “Changes undone”.

Read the whole row before you press it. Google says that if several changes are listed in the same row, Undo reverts all of them together. If you only want to reverse one of them, do that one by hand instead.

Undo a bulk edit, rule or upload

Bulk edits, copy and paste, automated rules and bulk uploads have their own undo. Google’s bulk actions undo guide puts it under the Tools icon, then Bulk actions → All bulk actions, where you pick Undo in the Actions column. Three rules matter:

• The undo reverts to the value before that bulk action, regardless of later changes. Undoing an older bulk budget edit can overwrite a newer one you meant to keep.
• You get one attempt. Once you run an undo, successful or not, the option disappears.
• Items that can’t be reverted, such as deleted items, return an error.

What can and can’t be undone

Google doesn’t publish a full list of which change types have Undo; it says “most types”. The practical test is the “User / Date & Time” column: it shows Undo when the change can be reverted, and “Changes can’t be undone” when it can’t. This table covers the cases Google does document:

The removed campaign row catches people out. Google’s enable, pause or remove guide is explicit: a removed campaign can’t be resumed or restored, though its performance data stays visible. If you only want a campaign off for a while, pause it.

Reverse a change by hand

When Undo isn’t there, or would revert more than you want, reverse the change yourself:

1. In change history, filter to the campaign and date, and open the change’s details with the arrow.
2. Write down the old value: the previous budget, target, bid, keyword status, location or schedule.
3. Open the campaign, ad group or keyword and set that value again.
4. Refresh change history and check your reversal is listed with the value you expected.
5. Add a note on the performance graph so anyone reading the dates later knows what happened.

If the change came from an auto-applied recommendation, reversing it once isn’t enough. Google’s auto-apply documentation says recommendations you opt into apply regularly, so the same type can apply again. Open Recommendations → Auto-apply settings, check the History tab for what was applied and when, and switch off the type you don’t want. Our guide to auto-apply recommendations explains each type.

Undo in Google Ads Editor

Google Ads Editor works on a downloaded copy of your account, so undo depends on whether you have posted. Before posting, the Editor shortcuts include Undo (Ctrl+Z, or Cmd+Z on Mac) and Redo (Ctrl+Shift+Z, or Cmd+Shift+Z). You can also right-click rows and choose Revert, or use Account → Full download to throw away every unposted change.

Google’s Editor revert guide points out two limits. Revert takes an item back to the version you last downloaded, not step by step through your edits. And a keyword moved between ad groups is two changes; reverting it removes the addition but doesn’t put the keyword back in its original ad group.

After you post, Editor can’t undo the changes automatically. The way back is an archive: export a backup before a large edit, and import it later if you need to restore the account as it was. Posted Editor changes also appear in change history, where the Tool filter finds them.

What undo doesn’t restore

Undo restores a setting, not a situation. Three things don’t come back:

• The days in between. Money spent on the wrong searches is spent, and conversions you missed while a budget or target was wrong stay missed. Those dates will look odd in every report, which is why the note matters.
• A bid strategy’s previous state. Google’s bid strategy status page lists a setting change, a new or reactivated strategy, and adding or removing campaigns, ad groups or keywords as reasons for a Learning status. Putting a target back is itself a setting change.
• A removed campaign. As above, it stays removed; you rebuild it.

Make big changes easy to reverse

The cheapest undo is the one you never need. Before a large change:

• Test it as an experiment. Google’s custom experiments let you run a changed copy of a Search, Display, Demand Gen or Video campaign against the original, on a share of its traffic and budget. If it wins, apply it to the original campaign; if it loses, end it and the original never changed.
• Review auto-apply. Know which recommendation types can change the account without anyone pressing a button. Google’s auto-apply settings guide shows where to see and switch them off.
• Draft big edits in Google Ads Editor and export an archive first, so you have a full before-copy to restore.
• Leave a note. Google Ads lets you add notes to the performance graph for a date. Write what changed, why, and the old value.
• Limit who can edit. Google’s access levels let Read-only users view campaigns without editing them; only Standard and Admin users can edit campaigns. Give people the lowest level their job needs.

Change one thing at a time where you can. If a budget, a target and a batch of keywords all change on the same day, change history can tell you what changed, but not which change caused the drop.

What to watch after a big change

This is a routine, not a Google rule. Stretch it if your customers usually take longer than a couple of weeks to convert, and read our guide on why Google Ads performance drops if results move for no obvious reason.

The trap is reverting on day two because conversions look light. If the change was a target or bid strategy, that reversal can start another round of learning on top of the first. Unless something is plainly broken, like spend far above budget or ads not serving, give it the time you planned.

Tools that keep an undo record

Google Ads keeps two years of change history and 30 days of Undo. Editor keeps a backup only if you export one. If you use other tools that change the account through the API, their edits appear in change history as “Google Ads API” or the tool’s name, but it is worth checking what record the tool itself keeps. Look for a tool that shows the before and after before you approve anything, records what was applied and when, and lets you reverse it from the same place.

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