If you’re working in paid search and doing campaign management, then you know how useful AdWords Editor (AWE) is. Every now and then, the software receives an update and although it is highly recommended to upgrade your current version, the old one usually still works.
This month, Google released version 8.5.3 and from the end of January, using older versions of AWE will stop working properly. When opening the program, you are likely to receive a notification to update it, with the option to update now with or without backing it up first.
From my experience, it has happened before that even if I choose the “Backup then update” option, unposted changes in some of the accounts can be lost while updating the software. This can obviously cause significant lost of time/effort as no one wants to lose track of important changes made via AWE, whether they are bid optimisations or a new account structure.
Manually back-up all unposted changes
Before updating the software, open each account one by one and export changes to an *.aes file. These are files that will keep track of all unposted changes, usually useful to share the changes between colleague or sometimes with clients themselves. Once you have an *.aes file back up for each account, you can safely upgrade AWE. So even if unposted changes were lost while updating, you can still re-import everything.
This can be a bit laborious if you are working under an agency MCC with dozens of accounts but remains by far the safest way to upgrade. Ask yourself this question, would you rather spend 15mn doing that or lose hours of hard work?!