How to Undelete a Facebook Ad

Accidentally deleting a well-performing Facebook ad can feel like a pit in your stomach. Don't panic just yet - that work isn't always gone for good. This tutorial will walk you through how to find and restore deleted Facebook ads, ad sets, and campaigns, and what to do to protect your hard work in the future.

What "Deleting" Actually Means in Facebook Ads Manager

First, it's important to understand the difference between pausing and deleting ads on Facebook's platform. When you want to stop an ad from running, you have two options:

• Pausing (or Turning Off): This is the recommended method for temporarily stopping an ad. By flipping the toggle switch to "off," you stop the ad from delivering and spending, but it remains visible in your main Ads Manager view. You can turn it back on at any time with a single click, and all of its historical data is easily accessible.
• Deleting: This is a more permanent action. When you delete an ad, ad set, or campaign, it's removed from your primary Ads Manager view to help declutter your account. It stops spending immediately, and you can't reactivate it. However, the key thing to remember is that it isn't wiped from Meta's servers entirely. The ad's structure and its performance data are still stored, just hidden away.

So, when we talk about "undeleting," what we really mean is finding that hidden, deleted item and using its information to create an exact copy that you can launch again.

How to "Undelete" Your Facebook Ad, Ad Set, or Campaign

The process of finding your deleted ads is the same whether you're looking for a campaign, an ad set, or a specific ad. The trick lies in using the Ads Manager's filter function to reveal items that are normally hidden.

Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring a Deleted Facebook Ad

1. Navigate to the Right Level: Open your Facebook Ads Manager. Go to the tab corresponding to what you deleted. If you axed a whole campaign, stay on the "Campaigns" tab. If it was just an ad set or an individual ad, click on the "Ad Sets" or "Ads" tab, respectively.
2. Find the "Search and filter" bar: Look for the search bar, usually located just above your list of campaigns. To the right of it, you’ll see a "Filters" dropdown menu. By default, Ads Manager is only showing you active, paused, or completed items.
3. Apply the "Deleted" Filter: Click the "Filters" dropdown. A menu will appear with multiple filter options. You need to filter by a "Delivery" status.
4. Duplicate the Deleted Item: Scroll through the list to find the ad, ad set, or campaign you want to restore. Now, here's the crucial step: you cannot simply click a button to "undelete" it. Instead, you have to recreate it by duplicating it. Check the box next to the deleted item you want to bring back, and then click the "Duplicate" button in the menu bar.
5. Review and Publish Your Restored Ad: After clicking "Duplicate," Ads Manager will open the campaign creation pane with a brand new, identical draft of your deleted item. All of your original settings - budget, schedule, audience targeting, placements, and creative - will be copied over. Carefully review everything to make sure it's correct, make any changes you need, and hit the "Publish" button to set it live again.

That's it! You've successfully recovered and relaunched your deleted ad.

How to Analyze Performance Data of Deleted Ads

Even if you don't intend to relaunch a deleted campaign, you might still want to access its performance data to inform future strategies. A deleted ad's history isn't erased - the spend, Reach, ROAS, CPA, and other metrics are all saved.

To view this data, simply follow the same first three steps from above:

1. Go to the appropriate tab in Ads Manager (Campaigns, Ad Sets, Ads).
2. Use the search and filter bar to filter by Delivery Status → Deleted.
3. Customize your columns or check your performance dashboard to see all the historical data associated with that deleted item.

This is extremely useful for end-of-quarter reviews or when you're looking back on what worked and what didn't. You can analyze the ad copy, creative, and targeting settings that produced great results and apply those lessons to new campaigns, even if the original campaign was deleted to clean up your account view.

Proactive Tips to Avoid Losing Ad Data in the Future

While recovery is possible, prevention is always better. Adopt these simple habits to protect your work and simplify your workflow.

1. Pause, Don't Delete

As a best practice, get in the habit of using the on/off toggle to pause campaigns instead of deleting them. Pausing achieves the same goal of stopping ad spend, but it keeps the campaign within your main dashboard view for easy access. Only delete a campaign if you are absolutely certain you have no future use for it or its data and your only goal is decluttering an account with hundreds of old tests.

2. Use Clear Naming Conventions

An organized Ads Manager is a safe Ads Manager. Accidental deletions often happen when you're cleaning up poorly named, confusing test campaigns. Implement a consistent naming convention to make it easy to identify campaigns at a glance.

A simple structure could look like this: [Campaign Goal]_[Audience]_[Geographic location]_[Creative Descriptor]_[Date] Example: Conversions_Lookalike1%_USA_VideoAd-SmilingWoman_2023-10-26

3. Maintain an External "Swipe File"

Don't let Facebook Ads Manager be the only place your creative and ad copy exists. Keep a simple "swipe file" in a tool like Google Docs, Notion, or a shared drive.

• Save your final ad copy text.
• Store the image or video files you use for creative.
• Take screenshots of high-performing ads for quick visual reference.

This external backup ensures that even if something goes horribly wrong inside Ads Manager, you have all the core components ready to quickly rebuild your ad from scratch.

4. Regularly Export Performance Reports

For your most important campaigns, get in the habit of occasionally exporting performance data. You can find the "Reports" icon in the top right of the Ads Manager menu bar. From there, you can export your current view or create a custom report and download it as a .CSV file. This gives you a permanent, offline backup of performance metrics that you can analyze any time.

Final Thoughts

Deleting a Facebook ad isn't the final curtain it might seem. By using the filtering options in Ads Manager, you can easily find your deleted work, review its historical data, and bring it back to life by duplicating its settings into a new campaign.

This manual process of digging through filters to restore data highlights a common frustration in marketing analytics - scattering information across platforms and relying on each tool's native reporting. At Graphed, we built a tool to solve exactly that. We centralize all your marketing data from sources like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Shopify into one unified, real-time dashboard. This way, your historical performance insights are always secure and accessible in one place, safeguarding you from accidental deletions and saving you from the manual work of pulling reports platform by platform.