Bulksheets are spreadsheets that let you create, edit and archive multiple Amazon Ads campaigns, ad groups and keywords in one upload instead of clicking through the console line by line. You use them for three main jobs: mass bid changes, negating wasteful keywords, and building new campaigns at scale. The rest of this guide walks you through downloading a fresh template, editing it safely, uploading it, and knowing when to stop doing this manually altogether.
TL;DR:
- Bulksheets are best used for occasional large campaign updates and should not be reused from outdated exports to prevent errors.
- Accurate IDs must be sourced from the current bulksheet download, not the console or screenshots, to avoid upload failures.
- Formula columns should be converted to static values before upload to ensure validation accuracy during bulk bid adjustments.
- Automate repetitive tasks like bid tuning and negative keyword management once weekly updates exceed two hours to save time and increase efficiency.
- Transition to automated workflows when bulk edits take more than an hour or two weekly, as automation can improve ad performance and free up time.
Table of Contents
- How do I create and download a bulk file for Amazon Ads?
- What do the product, entity and operation columns mean?
- How do I run bulk bid changes, negatives and new campaigns?
- How do I upload a bulk file and check for errors?
- What safety checks should I run before every upload?
- When should you move from bulksheets to automation?
- A weekly routine for safe bulk edits
- Where Osellpa fits once you outgrow spreadsheets
- Sources
- FAQ
How do I create and download a bulk file for Amazon Ads?
Every bulksheet starts life inside the Amazon Ads console, under Bulk operations in Campaign Manager. Skipping this step and reusing an old export is the single most common cause of failed uploads.
- Open Bulk operations from the left navigation menu in your advertising console.
- Choose your ad types. Bulksheets cover Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, and you can manage all three through the same bulksheet workflow.
- Set your date range and filters so the download only pulls the campaigns you actually plan to edit. A smaller file is easier to check and less likely to time out.
- Select the current template. Amazon replaced the legacy bulksheet format, and the new template is now the only one advertisers should use.
- Pick XLSX over CSV where possible. XLSX preserves column formatting and dropdown validation, which cuts down on formatting errors later.
- Save an untouched backup of the download before you change a single cell.
Always work from a file downloaded that same session. IDs and statuses shift constantly, and an hours-old file can carry stale data into your edits.
What do the product, entity and operation columns mean?
Three columns drive everything in a bulksheet: Product (which ad type the row belongs to, such as Sponsored Products), Entity (the record type, such as Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword or Product Ad), and Operation (what you want to do to that row, typically create, update or archive).
- A campaign row with Operation set to “update” changes settings like budget or status without touching anything else.
- An ad group row works the same way, but sits one level below the campaign.
- A keyword row carries match type, bid and the keyword text itself.
- A product ad row links a specific ASIN or SKU to an ad group.
One catch trips up almost everyone at least once: entity IDs inside a bulksheet are not the same as the IDs you see in the console interface, and pasting a console ID into a bulk file will typically throw an upload error. Always source IDs from the bulksheet itself, never from a screenshot or a different report.
You also cannot rename a keyword in place. To change keyword text, you archive the existing row and create a new one with the revised text.
Pro Tip: Keep a spare column noting why you changed each row (e.g. “bid cut, high ACOS”). It costs seconds now and saves a headache when you’re auditing results three weeks later.
How do I run bulk bid changes, negatives and new campaigns?
Most bulk work falls into four repeatable jobs, and each one benefits from a slightly different spreadsheet trick.
- Bulk bid changes: add a temporary formula column that calculates your target bid as a percentage of the current one, then paste the results as values into the Bid column before upload. Leaving live formulas in the file can cause validation errors on submission.
- Negating waste: filter your search term report for keywords with meaningful clicks but zero orders, a common practitioner benchmark being clicks above a certain threshold with no resulting sales, then add new rows with Entity set to Negative Keyword.
- Creating campaigns at scale: build rows for Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword and Product Ad entities together, each referencing the same campaign name so Amazon links them correctly on upload.
- Time-limited budget changes: raise daily budgets for an event like Prime Day using a bulk edit, then schedule a reminder to revert them, since forgetting this step is a quiet but common cause of overspend.
Statistic callout: Pairing a formula column with paste-as-values before upload is a technique specifically recommended to make percentage bid changes repeatable and safe across large keyword sets. For a deeper dive into profit-led bid strategy, Osellpa’s guide on optimising bids for profit is worth reading alongside this section.
How do I upload a bulk file and check for errors?
Uploads run through the same Bulk operations screen you used to download the template. Small files, a few hundred rows, typically process within minutes; files running into the thousands can take considerably longer, so plan uploads outside your busiest reporting window.
- Check the processing status on the Bulk operations dashboard rather than assuming success once the file leaves your browser.
- Read the error report line by line. Common issues include invalid or mismatched IDs, duplicate rows for the same entity, and cells formatted as numbers when Amazon expects text.
- Amazon’s own documentation covers these error patterns in detail, including row-level examples of what a valid update looks like.
- Spot-check a sample of campaigns in the console after upload to confirm bids, statuses and budgets match what you intended.
- Split very large files into smaller batches and stage the riskiest changes last, so a mistake in one batch doesn’t touch everything at once.
What safety checks should I run before every upload?
A short checklist before you hit upload prevents most of the errors that waste an afternoon.
- Download a fresh file for every edit session and keep the original as an untouched backup.
- Format ASIN and SKU columns as text first. Excel loves to strip leading zeros or convert long numbers into scientific notation, and that alone can break an upload.
- Test with a small subset of rows, review the error report, then roll the same logic out wider once you know it works.
- Never add columns Amazon doesn’t recognise. Extra columns don’t get ignored quietly; they can cause the whole row to fail.
- Preserve portfolio IDs on every row you update. Dropping them can shift budgets or reporting out of the portfolio you intended.
Following documented best practice for formatting and testing turns bulk uploads from a gamble into a routine task.
Pro Tip: Rename each saved bulk file with the date and purpose, such as “2026-03-14_bid_cuts_brandcampaigns.xlsx”. Six months of generically-named “bulksheet_final.xlsx” files is how mistakes get repeated.
When should you move from bulksheets to automation?
Bulksheets are the right tool for one-off or occasional mass edits, a seasonal budget change, a one-time keyword clean-up, a fresh campaign launch. They’re the wrong tool for anything you find yourself doing every week.
- Repeated bid tuning, ongoing negative-keyword additions and recurring budget pacing are exactly the jobs automation and API-driven workflows are built to reduce.
- Some advertising tools apply optimisation rules continuously rather than waiting for your next spreadsheet session, and sellers using automated workflows have reported sales increases of up to 20%.
- If bulksheet edits are eating more than an hour or two of your week, that’s usually the signal to shift recurring tasks into an automated PPC workflow and keep bulksheets for the occasional structural change.
A weekly routine for safe bulk edits
Set aside 30 to 45 minutes once a week. Pull your latest performance and search term report, filter for waste, then apply small test changes through a bulksheet before rolling them out further. Verify results in the console before the next cycle starts. Sellers scaling ad spend should treat this cadence as a floor, not a ceiling.
— Harry
Where Osellpa fits once you outgrow spreadsheets
Bulksheets solve the immediate problem, but they don’t watch your account while you sleep. Osellpa is built for the gap that opens up once weekly bid tweaks and negative-keyword clean-ups start eating hours you don’t have: it tracks profit, adjusts PPC bids automatically, and flags wasted spend without you opening a single spreadsheet. Instead of rebuilding the same bid-change file every Monday, you get rules that run continuously against your live Amazon data.
Plans start at the Launch tier, with other tiers available as your advertising activity grows. If you want to see where your current campaigns are leaking spend before committing to anything, run a free Amazon PPC bid optimisation report and compare the findings against your last bulksheet audit.
Sources
For field-level definitions, start with Amazon’s own bulksheets overview and the step-by-step get-started guide. For row-level examples of updating live campaigns, see the Sponsored Products update walkthrough. Sellers wanting broader context on catalogue discoverability alongside ad edits may also find this guide to Amazon SEO useful.
FAQ
How do you do a bulk listing on Amazon?
Bulk listing uses inventory file templates through Seller Central, which is a separate system from advertising bulksheets. Advertising bulksheets, by contrast, are downloaded and uploaded through the Ads console’s Bulk operations screen specifically for managing campaigns, keywords and bids.
What is bulk upload in Amazon Ads?
Bulk upload means submitting an edited bulksheet spreadsheet back into the Ads console so Amazon applies every row’s changes at once, rather than editing campaigns one by one. It supports creating, updating and archiving records across Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display.
How much does an Amazon ad campaign cost?
Amazon Ads runs on a pay-per-click auction model with no fixed campaign fee, so cost depends entirely on your bids, competition and budget settings. Tools that manage this spend, such as Osellpa’s advertising plans, start from £10 a month on the Launch tier.
Why am I suddenly seeing more adverts on Amazon Prime?
Higher ad volume on Amazon Prime video and other placements usually reflects advertisers expanding budgets or adopting newer formats, such as Sponsored Brands collections, across more of Amazon’s ad inventory. It isn’t tied to your individual account activity as a shopper.
Can I edit keyword text directly in a bulksheet?
No. Amazon’s bulksheet system doesn’t support renaming keyword text in place. The correct method is to set the existing keyword row’s Operation to “archive” and add a new row with the revised text as a fresh keyword.
