OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_REMOVED_ENTITY Bug?

[David Midgley]

Hi

I'm having problems with a new "OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_REMOVED_ENTITY" error.

It appears that you can't "undelete" an adgroup (ie set any properties of a removed adgroup, including Status) or even add a keyword to an existing adgroup where that keyword was previously deleted. This seems to be a change between the v201402 and v201406 versions of the API. Obviously these are things that you can do via the UI.

There is mention of this in another post:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/adwords-api/OPERATION_NOT_PERMITTED_FOR_REMOVED_ENTITY%7Csort:relevance/adwords-api/uLdWDk7dMgs/kCLnPsog1UAJ

Is this a bug? Is this going to get fixed soon?

Cheers

David

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi David,

AdWords API v201406 no longer allows you to undelete campaigns, adgroups, etc. The UI and older API versions allows this behaviour for now, but they will eventually start working like the way v201406 works today.

Cheers,
Anash P. Oommen,
AdWords API Advisor.

[David Midgley]

Thanks for the quick response Anash!

Let me explain my use case and maybe you can find a workaround?

We are working on an optimisation application that uses a strict naming convention for campaign and adgroup names. If a user accidentally deletes an adgroup, my software can't correct the error by recreating the adgroup because if we create a new adgroup with the same name in the same campaign we'll get a duplicate adgroup name error. Our solution to this problem was to rename the deleted adgroup which enabled us to create the new adgroup.

Now that we can't rename the deleted adgroup and we can't create a new adgroup with the same name, how can we enforce our strict naming convention? This naming convention links adgroups between campaigns and is critical to our operations.

We could "version" adgroup names, but this seems pretty untidy. We could use labels, but this could create thousands of labels and more (potentially error-prone) manual work.

Can you think of a workaround?

Cheers

David

[m...@kickstone.co.uk]

We do a similar thing, I missed that in the release notes.

How are google going to handle duplicate names, do we need to rename items to be deleted beforehand now or will duplicates of deleted entries be allowed?

Many thanks

[David Midgley]

Hi API team

Sorry to keep chasing on this, but will there be a fix for this or is there a workaround I haven't considered?

Cheers

David

On Monday, 8 September 2014 19:15:49 UTC+1, Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team) wrote:

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi David,

If I remember correctly, the name needs to be unique in only active + paused items, not globally (with the new change). So if the user deletes an adgroup with the same name, you could create one with the same name again. Let me know if you are seeing a different behaviour, and I'll ask the team to investigate this further.

Cheers,
Anash P. Oommen,
AdWords API Advisor.

[David Midgley]

Hi Anash

I've just done a test via the UI (I've already attempted lots via the API) and you cannot name a new adgroup the same name as a deleted adgroup in the same campaign.

It would be great if you could get the team to investigate further. Just to confirm, that is not in itself a problem. The problem is that we can't rename the deleted adgroup so we can add an adgroup with the name we want. As far as the API is concerned an adgroup becomes "read-only" when you remove it.

Cheers

David

[GregT]

David, it sounds like you do something extremely similar to us.  For a workaround, what we've had to do ever since we upgraded to v201406 is leave a small portion of our code at v201402 to just handle this scenario.  I.e. all our code is using v201406, except when we run into a case where we want to create an ad group with the same name as a deleted ad group, in which case we call into a separate class that uses v201402 to rename the deleted ad group so that we can now (using v201406) add an ad group with that name.  Klunky, but until AdWords brings consistency to this, it works.

FYI,

Greg

[David Midgley]

Hi Greg

I do exactly what you do, but I guess I'm scared that this could be a permanent change and so when v201402 gets retired, we'll be in big trouble!

The reason why I put the word "bug" in the question is to find out if this is by design or an unintended consequence of another update. And the follow-up question would be: if it is by design, has the team considered this senario? This is also odd because it diverges from the UI. Maybe it is a step in a bigger migration? Anash has mentioned earlier in this thread: "The UI and older API versions allows this behaviour for now, but they will eventually start working like the way v201406 works today."

If this is the future, then I hope we can find a workaround well before v201402 gets retired!

Cheers

David

[David Midgley]

Hi Anash/API Team

I responded to your question. Is there anything else you need to know?

It would be great to get an answer on this please!

Cheers

David

[Oliver]

Just thinking loud here, if the adgroups are deleted via your software, what if you rename the adgroup before you delete it?  We used to use a similar approach where we appended the text "_del" to all adgroup names that are about to be deleted.

Obviously, if the adgroup is deleted via the adwords interface rather than your software, then the above won't help.

Oliver

[Mariusz]

One more thing to bear in mind is that you probably should version deleted adgroups. Imagine:

• user creates adgroup “test”
• then deletes it, so the system first renames it to “test_del” and then marks as deleted
• user creates again adgroup named “test”
• user tries to delete it

The system will fail in step 4, because it will try to rename adgroup to “test_del”, but that name already exists. So what you may do in that case is to detect the error, and try to rename it to “test_del1”.

Cheers,

Mariusz

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Mariusz,

I've asked the team to investigate whether it is feasible to allow deleted adgroups and campaigns to be renamed. I'll update the thread as I hear from them,

Cheers,
Anash

[GregT]

Anash, thanks for looking into that!

Oliver & Mariusz, I can't speak for David, but for us, the problem occurs when the user uses the AdWords UI to delete ad groups outside our system.  If our system does the deletion, we do rename them before they're deleted (part of the rename includes a timestamp so that it can be created and re-deleted).  Thanks for the thoughts, though.

Thanks,

Greg

[David Midgley]

Hi all

If my software does the deletion, it adds a GUID to the end of the adgroup name prior to deletion to make sure it doesn't risk creating a duplicate in the future if it needs to recreate the adgroup.

The problem is when a human makes a mistake and deletes the adgroup and effectively "blocks" the software from creating it again...

Cheers

David

[David Midgley]

Hi Anash/API Team

Now that v201409 is released the countdown has started on the sunsetting of v201402 which basically means we need a workaround to this problem soon as v201402 is the only live version that allows the renaming of deleted adgroups!

Anash, you mentioned:

"

I've asked the team to investigate whether it is feasible to allow deleted adgroups and campaigns to be renamed. I'll update the thread as I hear from them

"

Have you heard from the team?

Cheers

David

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi David,

The team got back to me telling that this change is not feasible, so you need to rename and then delete if you need to maintain unique name.

Cheers,
Anash

[Eric Maas]

Hi Anash,

Can you find out if the unique constraint is still going to be enforced going forward for removed items?  If AdWords is no longer going to allow you to unremove an item, it seems strange that removed items would still be part of the uniqueness check.  As we've described in this thread, it presents problems for API users, but I would also see it creating problems for UI users as well.  The user would try to create a new Ad Group, the UI would tell them they can't because the name is already used - but when the user goes to look for it they can't find it, or they think to look at the removed Ad Groups and find it there, only to find they can't change it.

Thanks,

Eric

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[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Eric,

Campaigns don't enforce unique name in deleted items, I'll check with the team if the same behaviour can be extended to adgroups.

Cheers,

Anash

On Monday, October 20, 2014 5:56:04 PM UTC-4, eric.ste...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Anash,

Can you find out if the unique constraint is still going to be enforced going forward for removed items?  If AdWords is no longer going to allow you to unremove an item, it seems strange that removed items would still be part of the uniqueness check.  As we've described in this thread, it presents problems for API users, but I would also see it creating problems for UI users as well.  The user would try to create a new Ad Group, the UI would tell them they can't because the name is already used - but when the user goes to look for it they can't find it, or they think to look at the removed Ad Groups and find it there, only to find they can't change it.

Thanks,

Eric

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[Eric Maas]

Thanks!

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[Eric Maas]

Hi Anash,

Were you able to find out about the uniqueness behavior on adgroups? The 201402 version is sunsetting soon, so we need to know what we have to do.

Thanks,

Eric

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Eric,

We are still looking into this, and we are aware of the upcoming 201402 sunset. I'll update you once I hear from the team.

Cheers,
Anash

On Thursday, October 30, 2014 10:35:32 AM UTC-4, eric.ste...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Anash,

Were you able to find out about the uniqueness behavior on adgroups? The 201402 version is sunsetting soon, so we need to know what we have to do.

Thanks,

Eric

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Eric Maas <eric.ste...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks!

[David Midgley]

Hi Anash/API Team

It's been two and a half months since the last reply on this and the 201402 API has been sunset for a while now. Do you have an update on this?

Currently my app is alerting users to manually rename a deleted adgroup so it can create a new adgroup. As you can imagine this is not very practical...

It would be great to get clarity as to whether the GUI is going to change to disallow editing of removed adgroups (ie harmonise with how the API currently works) or if the API will re-enable the ability to modify deleted adgroups in the future.

Any kind of update would be great please!

Cheers

David

On Monday, 3 November 2014 15:41:43 UTC, Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team) wrote:

Hi Eric,

We are still looking into this, and we are aware of the upcoming 201402 sunset. I'll update you once I hear from the team.

Cheers,
Anash

On Thursday, October 30, 2014 10:35:32 AM UTC-4, eric.ste...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Anash,

Were you able to find out about the uniqueness behavior on adgroups? The 201402 version is sunsetting soon, so we need to know what we have to do.

Thanks,

Eric

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Eric Maas <eric.ste...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks!

Anash

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[Mark]

1. So if the agreed-upon method of handling 'undelete' is to always rename to a never-to-be-used-again name before removing, then why don't I see it in the documentation somewhere?

2. If it's not possible to unremove an adgroup with the same name (either via an ADD or SET or otherwise), why is this simple fact not in the documentation?

3. If the 201406 version was moving towards a goal by requiring the absurd workaround of renaming before delete, what is that goal?

4. Did the 201502 version have either a fix or a better workaround for this?

[Anash P. Oommen (AdWords API Team)]

Hi Mark,

(1, 2, 3). The fact that you cannot have campaigns (or adgroups within a campaign) with duplicate names has been a standard behaviour in AdWords for quite a while. So having to rename a campaign / adgroup to a never-to-be-used-again name before deleting is something that becomes a requirement (to maintain the uniqueness of name) since you cannot modify a deleted campaign. I'll ask our techwriter to add this on the best practices guide. 

(4) No, the UI will also start enforcing this requirement instead.

Cheers,
Anash P. Oommen,

AdWords API Advisor.