This may sound strange, but I was running into this same issue. I read somewhere to try a different gpt. So I clicked on explore gpt’s in the sidebar of the desktop app on my macbook. Specifically, I’m creating content for Canvas so I chose the gpt, Canvas LMS. Then a separate explorer window popped up. Using the same commands as before to no avail, this gpt was able to create files and downloadable links. For redundancy, I went back and ran the same gpt with the same command, and got the same error again. So, for some reason, it only works in the explorer window. Super strange, but a workaround that worked in case anyone is interested.
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As of Jan 14 2024 the issue persists… Devs, where are you
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Insane, isn’t it? (Was working last week, dead again this week).
Folks, I understand your frustration, but you are much better off reporting the issue to help.openai.com and using the support interface in the bottom right corner, there your issue will get flagged by the correct team to log that there is an issue, the developer forum is not the right place to get these issues resolved.
I did that, there was no response other than them saying they are aware of the issue
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Their support is beyond useless. It seems kike the first iteration of this type stuff is amazing and then each subsequent version is dumber. It happened with Siri and it’s happening with chatGPT. Its unpredictability is maddening. I had this issue last night. Ultimately i tried it in three different devices. It finally worked on one, the suddenly it worked on them all. I’m about to cancel my subscription.
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Hi thank you so much this worked !!!
although this should not have been unto the community to sort out, really disappointed to see the lack of support for a paid application
What worked? What did you do? I’m still getting this: It seems there’s still an issue with generating downloadable files. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you’re facing.
I recommend copying the text from the message above into a text editor such as Notepad or any word processor (like Word or Google Docs), then saving it manually as a text document.
If you need help with this process or would like me to try a different approach, feel free to let me know! “
While I was searching for the way to solve the problem, after just spamming the download option and retrying it on my PC web browser (Opera); I figured that I might as well try and download the file on my Phone (Android).
After setting everything up so I can download it from the link that was sent to my mail; I ended up just spamming the ‘retry download’ button on both my PC web browser and my Phone.
In the end, after god know how many times retrying to download it (I was spamming my phone for about 30 minutes and web browser for about 60 minutes; passively), the file actually got downloaded on my Phone.
I was getting ‘network error’ on both devices; the file sizes when I would get an error were mainly around 20-40mb, a smaller amount of errors were around 150mb.
After managing to download it on my Phone, the file format was .zip and the file size was 254mb.
I just then uploaded it to the Google Drive and downloaded it from the drive to my PC.
So all in all; just keep spamming the retry button and hope that it goes through, I guess.
I ran into this issue and, after a few hours of trying to devise a workaround, the “workaround” that worked for me was:
- start a fresh chat
- Test an upload and ask it to provide a download link.
- Once it worked in a new chat I simply asked the original chat for a summary to provide the new thread for continuity and kept going.
Clearly an unaddressed bug but not a hopeless loop. Hope this helps!
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Almost 7 months and still no fix for this? Mine also tends to trigger a session reset most of the time when it fails to give me a download link, which causes all its files to be deleted and seems to cause it to forget some aspects about things it was doing before as well, so then it would have to create all the files again but wouldn’t remember how and eventually when it shows me previews of some of the new ones, they’re totally wrong and mostly empty with mostly placeholders everywhere and not the proper contents. There’s other things causing these session resets or execution environment timeouts or resets (all of which cause all files and some knowledge to be deleted) like when it works too hard on something too quickly or with too much parallelizaton, and other things too causing that, so really I can’t seem to find a way to get anything finished properly with it and if it says something is finished it usually isn’t and if it tries to give me a download link it usually can’t and all progress gets lost and then it can’t remember how to make the same thing properly on its next attempt. Looks like the download links thing has been sitting unfixed for at least around 7 months now based on this forum thread, and I’m not really sure how to use chatgpt for anything useful until it’s solved and i feel like I’m wasting lots of time and money and never getting anything finished that i try to work on with chatgpt. I’m pretty close to giving up.
I’ve run into these types of issues a number of different times in different ways and what I find is whatever I’m asking for the file size or the character count is too big. What’s frustrating is I’ve hit a limit but the system itself does not acknowledge that limit and let me know what’s going on. To circumvent this whenever I run into a situation where something’s not working quite right I will request chat GPT return it to me in smaller pieces. After 20 minutes of bad links and banging my head on the wall here is the solution that worked:
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cough coug I got the same problem
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yup same issue i get something wrong with upload from /mnt/media
Same here. I’ve tried everything… When the conversation is fresh, there’s no problem, but after a few interactions, ChatGPT can’t give you any file. 
Kind of crazy it walks me through the steps to give it a sharable Google Sheet link so it can formulate it for me (after any download links fail to work) just to find out this isn’t even a feature. You’d think it would know its own abilities…
Go to OpenAI Help Center & Demand a Fix
- OpenAI Help Center
- Report this issue:
“I cannot download or process files in ChatGPT Plus. Every time I upload a file, the system blocks access and resets my data. Support has not responded. I demand an immediate fix.”
I have this in triplicate. Spent 4 hours organizing massive files. We were done. System resets, no downloads persisted. I actually cancelled my ChatGPT account as a result. But now I am having almost the same exact issue with Google Gemini. But at least sometimes I get a download out of it. ChatGPT just stopped EVER letting me download and even stopped letting me upload which was when I closed my account.
I’m also having this issue, having already allowed everything client-side
- Go to chat . openai .com/gpts
- Click “Explore GPTs” or go directly to “My GPTs” at the top right.
- Select your custom GPT (or create a new one).
- Click “Edit” next to the GPT you want to modify.
- Scroll down to the section labeled “Configure”.
- Under “Additional Tools”, toggle **
Code Interpreter (Advanced Data Analysis) ON. - Click “Update” or “Save” at the bottom.