Grants Account Tour: AdWords Editor

As we mentioned in our last post, AdWords Editor is a great desktop application that helps you make changes to your account.

Editor can save you hours because of the ease with which you can make mass changes to your account. And it works offline, so now you can make changes when you don’t have an Internet connection.

The first step to getting started with Editor is downloading the application, which you can do here. Once it’s saved to your desktop, you'll download your account. You may choose to include account statistics or not. For starters, I recommend reviewing your AdWords statistics online first in your account, especially if you’re more comfortable with that interface. Then try using Editor to make any changes.



Once your account is downloaded, you’ll notice that Editor has two panels – the narrow one on the left is to navigate the account; the larger one on the right is to make edits. Whatever campaign you highlight in the left panel will permit you to edit it on the right. It’s not possible to make any changes in the left panel; it’s just for navigation. To learn more about navigating with Editor, check out this article.

If you’re looking to make multiple large changes, consider using a spreadsheet. Then you can upload the spreadsheet to make multiple changes to your account. If you’re only changing a few keywords or ad texts, try doing it directly in Editor; there’s no need to format a spreadsheet to simply add a keyword or remove a couple ad creatives. It’s also possible to update campaign settings using Editor. You can adjust your geo-targeting settings, for example, or rename your campaigns.

After you make any changes, you need to post them to your account for them to go live. Since Editor is a desktop application, no changes will be made to your account until you post them. However, before you post changes, I recommend checking the changes to ensure that everything will post smoothly. This way you can know in advance if there are any expected errors. The red and yellow spots in any of the tabs help you see where errors or warning will occur. Then you can make the necessary changes to post your revisions.

Editor’s sleek interface and offline-editing capabilities will hopefully help you make more changes in your account and do so quicker than before. Try starting out with it by making a few changes, posting them, and checking out your AdWords account to make sure the edits are up and running. Then you could consider adding new ad groups with the application. And check out our How-To Guide for more details on using the application.

Posted by Taylor, AdWords Team