The invite code doesn't work
Start with the thing almost everybody has wrong, because most refused codes come straight from it.
A Group has one code, not one code each
An Invite Code belongs to the Group, not to the person who sent it. There is exactly one live code at a time, and everybody who joins that Group joins with the same one. Nobody has a personal code.
That has one consequence which explains most of these reports: generating a new code retires the old one. If one member taps 🔑 Generate Invite Code to invite somebody today, every code that anyone in the Group sent out earlier stops working — including codes sent by other members, in messages you cannot see.
So “my code worked yesterday” and “her code works and mine doesn’t” are the same event described from two sides: somebody generated a new one in between.
The app does try to avoid this. Tapping 🔑 Generate Invite Code while the Group already has a usable code hands out that same code with a fresh expiry rather than minting a new one, exactly so that what other members have already shared keeps working. A new code appears only when the old one can no longer be used.
The three reasons a code is refused
| The app says | What happened | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The code is not valid | It is not this Group’s current code — mistyped, or retired by a newer one | Ask any member of the Group to send you the code as it is right now |
| The invite has expired | Codes last seven days from when they were last handed out | Ask a member to tap 🔑 Generate Invite Code, which mints a fresh one, and send you that |
| The invite has already been fully used | The code was created with a limit on how many people could use it, and that many have | Ask a member to generate a new one |
Where you tapped a link rather than typing a code, the confirmation screen tells you which of the three it was before you commit to anything.
Expiry, in detail
A code expires seven days after it was created, or after it was last handed out by somebody tapping 🔑 Generate Invite Code while it was still usable — which slides the seven days forward without changing the code. So a Group that invites people regularly tends to keep the same working code indefinitely, and a Group nobody has invited anyone to for a fortnight does not. Simply opening the Group’s screen does not refresh anything.
A code has no use limit unless one was set, which means the ordinary case is that any number of people can join with it inside those seven days.
What to do, in order
- Ask for the code as it is now, not the message from last week. Any member can read it off the Group’s screen; they do not need to be the admin.
- Type it rather than trusting a copied message if the link came through a chat app that mangles URLs. The eight characters are the whole of it and case does not matter.
- Ask a member to generate a fresh code if it is still refused. That retires whatever is out there, so it is worth doing once and then sending it to everybody who still needs it.
What nobody can do for you
There is no way to recover a retired code, and nothing at FriendTrack’s end can put an old one back into use — the code is a slot on the Group, and a new one has taken it. Equally, nobody outside the Group can add you to it: joining always goes through a code held by somebody already in.
If you have lost contact with everybody in the Group, the honest answer is that you need a new invitation from one of them.