How to transcribe a Microsoft Teams meeting recording (2026 guide)

Microsoft Teams records meetings as .mp4 files stored in SharePoint or OneDrive. Getting a proper text transcript from that file depends on your Microsoft 365 plan and what you actually need — a verbatim record, a summary, or subtitles. Here is every method available in 2026.

Option 1: Teams built-in live transcription (Microsoft 365 plans)

Teams can transcribe a meeting in real time while it is happening. The feature is available on Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, and Enterprise (E1, E3, E5) plans. It is not available on the free Teams tier.

Start transcription during a meeting:

1. In an active Teams meeting, click the three dots (...) in the meeting controls.
2. Select Start transcription.
3. The transcript appears as a side panel and is visible to all participants.

Access the transcript after the meeting:

1. Open the meeting chat in Teams.
2. Click the Recordings & Transcripts tab.
3. Download the transcript as .vtt (subtitles) or .docx (Word document).

The .docx version includes speaker names and timestamps. The .vtt version is ready to attach to the video file as subtitles.

Limitations: Transcription must be started manually — it does not run automatically unless your admin has configured a meeting policy for it. Accuracy drops with accents and background noise. About 30 languages are supported.

Option 2: Microsoft Copilot meeting summary (Copilot add-on)

If your organization has Microsoft 365 Copilot (previously called Teams Premium Intelligent Recap), Teams generates an AI summary after each meeting — key points, action items, and chapter markers in the recording.

This is not a verbatim transcript. It is a structured summary with speaker attribution. Useful for leadership and project tracking, not for compliance or detailed reference.

Where to find it: After the meeting, open the meeting event in Teams calendar → Recap tab. The summary, chapters, and action items are listed there.

Option 3: Upload the recording to TranscribTxt (free, no Microsoft plan required)

This is the most flexible option. It works with the free Teams tier, personal Microsoft accounts, and cases where your IT admin has disabled the built-in transcription feature.

Step by step:

1. Open the Teams meeting chat and click the three dots on the recording thumbnail → Download. Alternatively, find the file in SharePoint → channel Files → Recordings.
2. The file downloads as an .mp4.
3. Go to TranscribTxt, upload the file, select the meeting language.
4. Download the transcript in TXT, SRT, or VTT format.

Processing time: A 1-hour meeting transcribes in approximately 3–5 minutes.

Language support: 99 languages with consistent accuracy. Better than Teams built-in for French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and most other languages.

The recording is deleted from TranscribTxt servers immediately after processing.

Option 4: Whisper (local, unlimited, private)

For highly sensitive meetings — legal proceedings, HR investigations, client calls under NDA — running Whisper locally means the audio never leaves your machine.

# Install
pip install openai-whisper

# Transcribe the downloaded Teams recording
whisper "teams-meeting.mp4" --language en --model medium --output_dir ./transcripts

Whisper outputs .txt, .srt, and .vtt files. On an M2 MacBook Pro, the medium model processes a 1-hour recording in 6–8 minutes. Use large-v3 for technical content or non-English audio.

For speaker diarization (labeling who said what), combine Whisper with pyannote-audio — both run locally with no data leaving the device.

Comparing the options

Method	Cost	Languages	Speaker labels	Best for
Teams built-in	Included (M365)	~30	Yes (.docx)	Workspace users
Copilot Recap	Copilot add-on	English (primarily)	AI summary	Action items
TranscribTxt	Free 5 files/mo	99	No (Business plan)	Any plan, multilingual
Whisper local	Free, unlimited	100+	With pyannote	Sensitive content

How to find a Teams recording if you can't locate it

Teams recordings go to different places depending on how the meeting was set up:

• Channel meeting → SharePoint → the channel's document library → Recordings folder
• Private (non-channel) meeting → OneDrive of the meeting organizer → Recordings folder
• Meeting chat → click the recording thumbnail → three dots → Open in SharePoint

If the recording is missing, check whether it was auto-deleted. Teams admins can set a retention policy that deletes recordings after 60, 120, or 180 days.

Getting more from your Teams transcript

• Search across meetings. Store transcripts in a shared SharePoint folder or Notion database. When someone asks "what did we decide about the Q3 budget?", search the text instead of rewatching recordings.
• Auto-generate meeting notes. Paste the transcript into Claude with: "Summarize this meeting and list action items with owners."
• Create subtitles for internal training. Export as .srt from TranscribTxt and use VLC or any video editor to burn in subtitles before sharing the recording with new team members.
• Compliance archiving. Teams transcripts saved as .docx with speaker names and timestamps are acceptable documentation for many regulated industries.