If you’re getting a WhatsApp error “Download failed, sorry this media file appears to be missing. Please ask sender to resend it” while downloading the photo, video and files, this tutorial will help you to solve the problem. The error occurs due to either the file you’re downloading has expired or deleted from the WhatsApp servers. Before you try the solution, check the following.

1. Your phone has an active Internet connection with a strong signal. If your Internet connection is very slow, you might get the WhatsApp error,”The download was unable to complete. Please try again later”.
2. Make sure that your phone’s date and time are set correctly.
3. If there is sufficient free storage available on your SD card, but you still can’t download any files on it from WhatsApp, you might need to delete WhatsApp data from your SD card.
4. Turn off read only mode on your SD card.
Source : http://www.baatkar.com/2020/09/whatsapp-download-failed-sorry-media-file-appears-missing.html