WeTransfer 'This transfer has expired'? Why the link died, if you can recover it, and the fix

First, work out which situation you are in

The wording on the page varies by device and by WeTransfer's current design, so use what you know about the transfer as much as the message itself.

• The page says the transfer has expired: the sender's chosen time ran out. See cause one, then the recovery section.
• The page says the transfer was deleted, or the link worked earlier and now leads nowhere before its expiry date: the sender probably removed it. See cause two.
• The sender recently cancelled or downgraded a paid WeTransfer plan and their long-lived links stopped working: see cause three.
• The link opens but the download won't start or says you don't have access: this is not expiry. See the section on download limits and access.

Cause 1: The transfer simply ran out of time

This is by far the most common one. WeTransfer's help centre says the sender chooses how long a transfer stays available when they upload it, and the maximum depends on their plan. Its own wording for the plans is: 'Free and Starter plans: uploads can be kept online for up to 3 days.' On the Ultimate subscription, transfers can stay active for as long as the sender likes.

Two details catch people out. First, WeTransfer says the availability period is calculated from the exact moment the transfer is sent. It does not wait for the recipient to open the email, so a link sent on Friday afternoon from a Free account can be gone before someone checks their inbox on Monday. Second, the expiry date printed in the email is the one set at the time of sending. If the sender later changed it, the email won't show that.

Files uploaded to someone's personal WeTransfer page follow a different rule: WeTransfer says those are available for 30 days and are saved in the page owner's transfer overview.

Cause 2: The sender deleted it

A sender can delete any transfer from their account at any time: they click 'Transfers' in the top navigation, hover over the transfer in the 'Sent' panel and choose 'Delete'. People sometimes do this to tidy up, or because they sent the wrong file, without realising someone still needed it.

Deletion is final. WeTransfer's article on expired transfers lists 'The transfer has been deleted by the sender' as one of the reasons no recovery option appears, and says the files in those cases have been permanently removed from its servers. As a recipient you can't undo it, and you can't delete or restore a transfer someone else sent you either. The only fix is to ask the sender to upload the files again.

Cause 3: The sender's paid plan ended

If the sender used to pay for WeTransfer and set long expiry dates, those links depend on the subscription. WeTransfer's help centre says that if a paid plan is cancelled or downgraded, all active transfers will be deleted 28 days after the cancellation occurs, and after that they can no longer be downloaded or recovered.

So a link that was meant to last months can stop working a few weeks after someone changes their billing. Again, only the sender can fix it, by uploading the files again or by restarting their plan before that 28-day window closes.

Can you recover an expired WeTransfer?

Sometimes, but the conditions are narrow. WeTransfer's help centre says: 'Recovery is available to Ultimate, Teams, and Enterprise plan users only.' The transfer also has to have been sent with the Recoverable option switched on. WeTransfer says recovery is enabled by default for new transfers, but a sender can turn it off before uploading.

Even then there is a time limit, which depends on file size. Files smaller than 256 MiB can be recovered for up to one year after expiry. Files larger than 256 MiB can be recovered for up to 90 days after expiry. Outside those windows, the transfer can't be restored.

For Free and Starter users, WeTransfer's own page on recovering expired transfers says expired files are permanently deleted from its servers and there is no recovery path. If neither you nor the sender is on an eligible plan, don't spend time hunting for a trick: there isn't one.

• Open the expired transfer from its download link, or from your sent or received transfer list in your WeTransfer account.
• If recovery is available, you will see an option to recover the transfer.
• Click the recovery button to restore it, then download it.
• No recovery option? WeTransfer gives three reasons: recovery was not enabled when the transfer was sent, the recovery window has passed, or the sender deleted it. In all three, ask for a fresh upload.
• WeTransfer's help article does not spell out whether the sender's or the recipient's plan is the one that counts, so if you are the recipient, the most reliable route is to ask the sender to check their 'Sent' panel.

'Download limit reached' or the download won't start

If the link opens but you can't download, expiry is probably not the problem. WeTransfer's help pages don't describe a maximum number of downloads for an ordinary transfer. The sender just sees a 'Total downloads' figure and a 'Downloaded' or 'Not yet downloaded' label.

The limits WeTransfer does document sit elsewhere. On the sending side, its plan-limits page says the Free plan lets you 'send up to 10 transfers (or 3 GB total) in any 30-day rolling window'. If the sender hit that, they may not be able to send you a replacement until earlier transfers drop out of the 30-day window. On the receiving side, a sender can use Access Control to restrict downloads, in which case WeTransfer says only the people on the access list can download the transfer, and downloaders are asked to verify their email. If you are not on that list, the sender has to add you.

• Make sure you are using the full link from the original email. WeTransfer's error-code article suggests retrying from the original notification email and checking the link is complete and hasn't expired.
• If the download stalls, try a different up-to-date browser or a private window, and temporarily turn off VPNs, ad-blockers or extensions one at a time.
• Check you have enough free disk space for the size of the transfer.

If you are the sender: how to stop links expiring too soon

Most expired-link problems are avoided on the sender's side, before anything goes wrong.

• Set the expiry when you upload, using 'Expires in' in the transfer panel, and pick the longest your plan allows if the recipient might be slow.
• Extend it before it lapses: go to the 'Transfers' tab, click the transfer under 'Sent', open the 'Expiration date' dropdown and choose a new date from the calendar. Available dates depend on your plan, so on Free or Starter you still can't go beyond 3 days.
• Tell the recipient when you change the date. WeTransfer notes their email shows the expiry date at the time of sending.
• Don't delete a transfer until you know it has been downloaded. The 'Downloaded' label and 'Total downloads' count in your 'Sent' panel tell you.
• If you rely on recovery, check the Recoverable option is still on before you upload, and remember it only applies on Ultimate, Teams and Enterprise.
• If you are cancelling a paid plan, download or re-share anything important first. Active transfers are deleted 28 days after the cancellation.

Need to resend it right now?

If the original link is gone and you just need to get the files across today, OneSol Send at onesol.io/send lets you upload up to 5 GB per transfer and share a single link, and the recipient downloads without needing an account; you do need a free OneSol account to send. Be aware that OneSol Send deletes files automatically after 24 hours, which is even shorter than WeTransfer's free window, so it suits 'send it now' jobs. If the files need to sit behind a link for weeks, a cloud drive is the better choice.