The version 2 of WooCommerce had a function where when you added new files to existing products all the existing purchasers received access to the new files as well. That was good when you wanted to give everyone access to the new files. One problem though was that if the downloads were limited in number or time the new files would receive the full access as of the adding.
So if the download was limited to for example 365 days and a purchase was two years ago then the new file was available to this purchaser for a full year after the new file has been added. Not really the desired outcome in this case.
And adding to the issue was that if you edited a file line in the product WooCommerce handled it the same as deleting the old file and adding a new one with the new permissions.
So if you had limited downloads the only choice was to link to a file that never changed its name. Like an archive without version number.
So in version 3 WooCommerce changed the system to not grant access to newly added files at all. Depending on how you like to sell your digital products that may not work well either. And this change may have created issues in the way you sold software. If you always wanted to give access to everyone that wasn’t working any more all of a sudden.
Editing file lines now works by replacing the name and download link and keeping all permissions from the file (line) being edited.
There is a plugin available at Github that emulates the original v2 way of adding permissions that you can add to your site if you want to have the old way of working.
In our business we had the problem that neither solution was satisfactory. We had some unlimited download products and some limited time products. And then we also wanted be able to maybe just generate download permissions for orders placed after a certain date. So the question was – how do we grant new download permissions for new files on old, existing orders?
For this we created a new plugin, MAK WooCommerce Download Permissions, to take care of that for us. With it, after you add files, you can decide to copy existing permissions from another file of the product or you can create new permissions (with download times calculated for the purchase date if applicable). You can do this for all orders, orders after a certain date or not grant any access for old orders at all. The choice is yours for each file you add to a product.