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Unleash WhatsApp: Complete Guide to Sending Any Document Type, No Matter the File or Size!

Here’s the types of documents you can send with WhatsApp plus a trick for sending ‘non approved’ file types or larger files.

A long time ago, WhatsApp’s ‘document support’ would only let you send PDF documents. (strictly speaking, any file with a .PDF extension). Happily, that’s been expanded to a wider range of document types (file extensions).  WhatsApp’s site doesn’t clearly disclose what doc types are permitted (not that we could find).

What documents you can send with WhatsApp

So we did our own testing and came up with this list of WhatsApp approved document types.

  • .docx, .xlsx, .pptx (the ‘new’ post-2007 document formats)
  • .doc, .xls , .ppt (the older and more virus vulnerable document formats)
  • .pdf
  • .txt

(This list may not be complete and might not apply to all WhatsApp clients.)

What’s not allowed – at least not officially

Some document types NOT allowed via WhatsApp, in our testing are:

  • .docm, .xlsm, .pptm (the macro enabled post-2007 document formats)
  • .rtf (Rich Text Files, another virus infection method)
  • .log .csv (common plain text file extensions)

But that restriction is easily bypassed, see below.

File size now 2GB in WhatsApp

WhatsApp now allows sending files up to 2GB per file.

That’s a change from 100MB in July 2022.

That should be more than enough for most Office documents, especially the ‘new’ .docx, .xlsx .pptx formats that are automatically compressed.

Bypass WhatsApp file type restrictions

Trick WhatsApp into sending any file, simply by changing or adding an extension to the file name.

WhatsApp doesn’t look at the file itself, just the ending file extension. Change or add an approved extension and WhatsApp won’t know or care.

For example, to send  Daily.log  rename it to  Daily.log.pdf .  Let the receiver know to remove the extra extension.

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