Friend gifted me a game, code xbox sent me to redeem doesn't work

Is your friend in the same country as you? For a code to work, the person who gifts you the code have to be in the same country.

Best work around for this is to have your friend who sent you the gift code sign into your account on their xbox and redeem the code for you, then you'll be able to download the game on your console.

Changing region doesn't let you purchase stuff from the store for that region or redeem gifted codes. The best work around I found was having a friend from that region redeem the gift code so that I could have the content, I'm sure this would also work
with purchases. Other than that I don't have any other suggestions, let me know if it works.

There are two ways to gift to friends. The first, email gifting, will give you a redeemable code after purchase (usually sent to you via email). This one you can then send to your friend. The only drawback is if you get their email address wrong and they may not receive it.

The second method which is the best is gifting directly to their gamertag on your list. That code will be sent to them via the Xbox Message Center and can be redeemed directly on the console.

Hi Harish, my name is Rodrigo. I'm an Independent Advisor and a member of the Microsoft community and I'd love to assist you today.

I am sorry to hear that.

Go to your order history page https://account.microsoft.com/billing/orders and look for the item.

Select View gift code.

If the code was redeemed, check the name it was sent to.

If the code is still active, select View gift code and then Copy it and send to your friend.

Let me know if it works!

Source:

https://support.xbox.com/help/subscriptions-billing/buy-games-apps/gifting-digital-xbox-game-help