All ink cartridges have expiration dates, but we sometimes get the question of how long can ink cartridges really last.  Well, the official expiration dates you see printed on OEM inkjet cartridges you buy in the store are both true and slightly misleading.  Cartridges definitely will expire - eventually the ink will get too dried out and the nozzles will become permanently blocked.  But they aren’t necessarily going to become usless right after they expire.

If you put a newly-expired cartridge in your printer, it will probably give you streaky or light prints because the nozzles are slightly blocked.  For cartridges like this, you might be able to just run the cleaning utilities a bunch of times and eventually get the cartridges working like normal.  For cartridges that are well past the expiration date, you will have to soak them to try to get them to work.   Soaking the bottom portion of cartridges can be very effective in unclogging the nozzles, so there is a decent chance that you can save a cartridge that is expired.  If you have a really old cartridge that you soaked, installed and cleaned and it still isn’t working correctly, then there probably isn’t much you can do.  Eventually unused cartridges will become so dry that no troubleshooting technique will work.