Midjourney FAQ: Invalid reference images, rejected jobs, and recovering lost works

When generating images with Midjourney, the most frustrating part is often not the prompt, but when a reference image suddenly stops working, a job gets rejected, or your work “disappears.” Below is a Midjourney FAQ organized by the most common issues, aiming to solve them in one go with practical, actionable methods.

Reference image invalid: the link opens but isn’t recognized by Midjourney

Midjourney has strict requirements for “image links”: ideally a directly accessible .jpg/.png that’s publicly reachable. Many links copied from search results are actually redirect pages, and Midjourney will deem them invalid.

A more reliable method is to upload the reference image directly into the Discord chat box. After sending it, right-click the image and choose “Copy Link,” then put that link at the very beginning of your prompt. If you’re using a web gallery link, make sure it isn’t an address that requires login to access; otherwise Midjourney may fail to fetch it.

Job blocked/rejected (Blocked/Rejected): not a network issue—most likely you triggered a rule

When Midjourney rejects a job, common causes include the prompt triggering content-safety rules—for example, overly explicit content, anything involving minors, clear hate content, or graphic violence details. Even if you think the description is “artistic,” Midjourney may still block it outright.

The way to handle this is to replace sensitive terms with more neutral wording, reduce descriptions like “realistic gore/explicit body parts,” and avoid adding real people’s names or identifiable information. If you included a reference image, Midjourney may also reject it due to the image content; in that case, swapping the image is often more effective than rewriting the prompt.

Generation stuck or no response: check channels and permissions first, then check status

When using Midjourney in Discord, if you’re not in a channel where the bot is allowed to speak, your command may look like it “went through” but produces no result. First, test a Midjourney command in an official commonly used channel or in an authorized channel in your own server.

If it doesn’t respond in any channel, try logging out of Discord and back in, or check on the web client whether you can see messages from the Midjourney Bot. You can also check the Midjourney service status page (official Status) to confirm whether there’s an outage or unusually high queue pressure.

Recovering works and download failures: don’t rely only on the gallery

Many people assume their work exists only in the Midjourney gallery, but the most reliable “archive” is actually in Discord messages: go to your DM history with the Midjourney Bot, or scroll back through the channel where you generated the image. Once you find the image message, open the original and save it—this is usually faster than repeatedly refreshing the gallery.

If you need to recover via a Job, Midjourney supports using /show together with Job information to locate it; you can also copy the link to that generation message as a backup. When the web download button doesn’t work, switching browsers, disabling blocking extensions, or opening the original image in a new tab to save it directly will usually resolve Midjourney download failures.