How to record a Microsoft Teams meeting (2026 guide)

To record a Microsoft Teams meeting, click the three dots (More) in the meeting controls, choose Record and transcribe, then Start recording. Teams notifies all participants automatically. When you stop, the recording saves as an .mp4 to OneDrive (private meetings) or SharePoint (channel meetings). You need an eligible Microsoft 365 plan and recording permission.

1. How to start recording in Teams

Recording lives in the meeting controls at the top of the Teams window during an active call.

1. Join or start the meeting.
2. Click the three dots (More) in the meeting toolbar.
3. Select Record and transcribe, then Start recording.
4. Teams shows a banner to everyone: this meeting is being recorded. (You can usually turn on live transcription from the same menu at the same time.)
5. When the meeting is over, open the same menu and choose Stop recording, or just leave the meeting — recording ends automatically.

The video is processed in the background and appears in the meeting chat and your storage a few minutes after the call ends.

Who can record. On Microsoft 365 plans, the meeting organizer and participants from the same organization can typically record, depending on the policy your IT admin has set. Guests, anonymous users, and external participants usually cannot. As of 2026, the exact rules depend on your tenant's meeting policy.

Plan requirements. Recording is generally available on paid Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise plans (Business Basic and above). It is not available on the free Teams tier. If you do not see the Record and transcribe option, your plan or your admin policy likely does not allow it.

2. Where Teams meeting recordings are saved

This trips people up most often, because Teams chooses the storage location based on the kind of meeting.

• Private and scheduled meetings (the ones you set up from your calendar) save to the organizer's OneDrive for Business, inside a folder named Recordings.
• Channel meetings (started from a Teams channel) save to the SharePoint document library for that team, also in a Recordings folder.

How to find and download the .mp4

The fastest route is through the meeting itself:

1. Open the meeting chat in Teams after the call.
2. You will see a thumbnail of the recording. Click the three dots on it.
3. Choose Open in OneDrive (or SharePoint), then Download.

Or go straight to storage:

1. Open OneDrive (private meeting) or the team's SharePoint site (channel meeting).
2. Navigate to the Recordings folder.
3. Download the .mp4 file.

That .mp4 is the master copy. Keep it somewhere durable, because organizations often set recordings to auto-expire after a number of days.

3. Consent: tell people you are recording

Teams displays a recording banner automatically, but a banner is not the same as informed consent. Good practice — and in many places, the law:

• Announce it out loud at the start, especially for external guests who may join late.
• Ask before you start if anyone might object, particularly in sensitive HR, legal, or medical conversations.
• Know your region's rules. Some jurisdictions require all-party consent; others only one party. The requirements vary by country and by state.

This is general guidance, not legal advice — when in doubt, check your local rules or ask your compliance team.

4. The natural next step: turn the recording into a transcript

A recording is searchable only if you watch the whole thing. A transcript is searchable in seconds. Once you have the .mp4, the simplest path to clean, accurate text is to upload it to TranscribTxt.

1. Download the Teams .mp4 from OneDrive or SharePoint (Section 2 above).
2. Upload it to TranscribTxt.
3. Download your transcript as TXT, SRT, or VTT.

TranscribTxt accepts the Teams .mp4 directly — no conversion needed. It runs on ElevenLabs Scribe, transcribes in 99 languages, and adds speaker labels on Pro and Business plans so you can see who said what. The Free plan covers 5 files a month with no card required; Pro is $12/mo for 1,200 minutes. Uploaded audio is deleted after transcription.

For a deeper walkthrough — including Teams' own built-in transcription and Copilot recaps — see how to transcribe a Microsoft Teams meeting. From there, you can write meeting minutes from the recording or compare options in our roundup of the best AI meeting transcription software for 2026. Use Zoom too? The Zoom recording guide covers the same flow for that platform.

5. Tips for a recording that transcribes well

The quality of your transcript later depends almost entirely on the audio you capture now.

• Ask people to use headsets. A headset mic beats a laptop's built-in mic and kills most echo and room noise.
• One speaker at a time. Cross-talk is the single biggest source of transcription errors and confuses speaker labels.
• Mute when not speaking. Background typing, dogs, and street noise all degrade accuracy.
• Encourage cameras-optional, mics-on. Clear audio matters far more than video for a usable transcript.
• Name yourselves on first speaking. A quick "This is Maria from product" makes speaker labels easy to map to real names afterward.

Get the audio right during the call, and the transcript afterward is nearly verbatim.

Quick recap

Step	What to do
Start	Three dots → Record and transcribe → Start recording
Permission	Organizer or same-org member, paid Microsoft 365 plan
Where it saves	OneDrive (private) or SharePoint (channel), Recordings folder
Get the file	Meeting chat → recording → Download the .mp4
Make it useful	Upload the .mp4 to TranscribTxt for a text transcript

You have the recording. Now make it readable — transcribe it free on TranscribTxt and search a meeting in seconds instead of rewatching it.