How to duplicate or delete campaigns, ad sets and ads

Last updated June 10, 2026

The ads manager lets you copy any campaign, ad set or ad — including everything nested inside it — and delete entities you no longer need. Both actions start the same way: select one or more rows in the table, and an action bar appears with Duplicate, Delete and the rest of the bulk actions. If you haven't browsed the table yet, see How to view and navigate the ads manager.

Duplicating a single entity (a paused copy)

Select one campaign, ad set or ad by checking its row.
In the action bar, click Duplicate.
A confirmation dialog opens. Leave Copies at 1 and the Activate copies switch off.
Click the Duplicate button to confirm.

By default new copies start PAUSED — the dialog even labels this as recommended — so nothing spends until you review it. The copy lands next to the original and the table resyncs from Meta automatically.

Recursive duplication of child ad sets and ads

Duplicating is always a deep copy. When you duplicate a campaign, every ad set and every ad inside it is copied too. When you duplicate an ad set, every ad inside it comes along with all settings preserved. The confirmation dialog spells this out before you commit:

Campaign — "Creates a deep copy of each campaign — all ad sets and ads inside are copied too."
Ad set — "Creates a deep copy of each ad set — every ad inside is copied too, with all settings preserved."
Ad — "Creates a copy of each ad."

You don't need to duplicate children separately — copying the parent is enough.

Bulk-duplicating ad sets and choosing a target campaign

You can select several rows at once and duplicate them all in one action. When the selected rows are ad sets, the duplicate dialog adds a Target campaign (optional) picker so you can place all the copies inside a different campaign on the same account.

Select the ad sets you want to copy.
Click Duplicate.
Open the Target campaign dropdown. Leave it on Same campaign as source to keep copies where they are, or pick another campaign to move every copy there.
Confirm.

The campaign list loads the first time you open the dialog for ad sets, so give it a moment if it shows "Loading…". The target-campaign option only applies to ad sets — campaigns and ads don't show it.

Want to copy ads into a specific ad set instead? Use the Duplicate to… action that appears when you select ads. It lets you choose any target campaign and ad set, pick Copies per ad, set the new ads' status, and choose an Engagement mode — Keep likes & comments (same post) re-uses the original post so social proof carries over, while Fresh copy creates a brand-new post that starts at zero. Dynamic/catalog ads fall back to a fresh copy automatically.

Creating 1–10 copies and setting active or paused

Every duplicate dialog includes the same two controls:

Copies — make between 1 and 10 copies per selected entity. The confirm button updates live, e.g. Duplicate 6 when you copy 3 ad sets twice.
Activate copies — leave the switch off and copies start PAUSED (recommended); turn it on and they start ACTIVE. In the "Duplicate to…" dialog this appears as a New ads status dropdown with Paused and Active options.

If any copies fail on Meta's side, the toast reports the split (for example "4 ok, 2 failed") so you know exactly what landed.

Select the campaigns, ad sets or ads you want to remove.
Click Delete in the action bar (it's styled in red).
A confirmation modal appears: "This permanently deletes the selected … on Meta. This cannot be undone."
Click Delete to confirm, or Cancel to back out.

Deletion runs against Meta before the rows disappear, so you won't see items vanish and then reappear on an error. Only the entities Meta confirms as deleted are removed from the table; anything that failed stays selectable so you can retry, and the toast shows the count.

Deleting is permanent. If you only want to stop spend, select the rows and use Turn off instead — see How to bulk edit status, budget and bidding.