The Scenario
You are an account manager. You just inherited a client's Meta Ads account. The previous manager left and there are 150+ ads across the account — active, paused, some from campaigns that ended over a year ago.
Your first call with the client is Friday morning. They want to know what is actually running, what should be archived, and how chaotic the account really is. You have Thursday.
The bad version of Thursday:
- Open Ads Manager, set filters to show all statuses
- Scroll through 150 rows in the UI
- Try to export — realize the export only includes the columns visible in your current view
- Reconfigure the view to include creation dates, re-export
- Clean the Excel file, group by status manually
- You have a partial picture and a lot of "I will check on that" for Friday.
One prompt gives you the full inventory before lunch.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that can pull every ad in an account regardless of status, so you get the complete picture without configuring Ads Manager views.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
List all ads in our Meta Ads account and write ad ID, ad name, ad set name, campaign name, status, and creation date into columns A through F. Sort by status so ACTIVE ads appear first, then PAUSED, then ARCHIVED.
SheetXAI fetches the complete ad inventory, writes every ad with its lineage (campaign → ad set → ad), and groups by status. You have a 150-row workbook sorted by what matters most for the Friday call.
What You Get
A full ad inventory sorted for action:
- Active ads at the top — what is currently running and billing
- Paused ads in the middle — the conversation about what to archive
- Creation dates in column F — paused ads from 18 months ago are immediately obvious
The account picture is clear before you talk to the client. You know how many ads are active, you know how much dead weight is sitting paused, and you have IDs ready if changes are made on the call.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
A large inherited account has layers of complexity beyond status.
When you want to focus specifically on paused ads for the archive review
The active ads can wait. The immediate question is what to clean up.
Fetch all Meta Ads ads with status PAUSED. Write ad name, campaign name, ad set name, and date last edited into columns A through D. Sort by date last edited ascending so the oldest paused ads appear first.
When the client wants the list grouped by campaign
The audit conversation is easier organized the way the client thinks about the account.
List all ads in this Meta Ads account. Group them by campaign name. Within each campaign group, sort by status (ACTIVE first, then PAUSED). Write campaign name, ad set name, ad name, status, and creation date into columns A through E. Leave a blank row between campaign groups.
When you need to flag ads paused for more than 60 days
The definition of "should be archived" is ads paused for more than 60 days.
Fetch all PAUSED ads in this Meta Ads account. Write ad name, campaign name, ad set name, and date last edited into columns A through D. In column E, write "archive candidate" if the date last edited is more than 60 days ago. Sort by column E so archive candidates appear first.
When you want the full picture: status, recent spend, and pause age in one view
The comprehensive account health workbook for the client call.
List all ads in this Meta Ads account with ad name, campaign name, status, and creation date in columns A through D. Fetch last 30 days spend for each ad and write it in column E (write 0 if no spend). In column F, write "no recent spend" for any ACTIVE ad with zero spend in the last 30 days. Sort by status, then by column E descending within each status group.
The pattern: the account audit that was going to take all of Thursday happens before lunch. You walk into Friday with data, not impressions.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and ask it to pull a complete ad inventory into any Excel workbook you have open. The Meta Ads integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related work, see how to do bulk status updates from an Excel workbook or the Meta Ads in Excel overview.