How To: Record a meeting in Teams (Desktop)

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Any Teams meeting or call can be recorded for future viewing. The recording captures audio, video, and screen sharing activity.

A recording will expire and be automatically deleted after a set period of time.

Notes: 

  • Meeting recordings won't capture whiteboards, annotations, shared notes, and also won't include videos or animations embedded in PowerPoint Live presentations. 

  • When you view a meeting recording, you'll see no more than four peoples' video streams at once.

In this article

Important: 

 

Start recording

When you start recording a meeting, you also turn on live transcriptions (desktop) or live transcriptions (mobile).

  1. Start or join the meeting.

  2. Go to the meeting controls and select More actions More options button > Start recording.

    Image shows how to start a recording in a Teams meeting.

    Everyone in the meeting gets notified that recording and transcription have started.

    Image showing the full notification you see once you start recording a Teams meeting.

    Notes: 

    • You can't make multiple recordings of the same meeting at the same time. If one person starts recording a meeting, that recording will be stored on the cloud and available to all participants.

    • Meeting participants have the option of viewing the transcription during the meeting. For details, see view live transcription.

Stop recording

  1. Go to the meeting controls and select More actions More options button.

  2. Choose one of the following:

    • Stop recording: Stops the recording and live transcription.

    • Stop transcription: Stops just the live transcription. The recording continues until you select Stop recording.

    •  

Find recordings

Recordings are available in different places depending on the type of meeting.

  • The recording is processed and saved to SharePoint if it was a channel meeting or OneDrive if it was any other type of meeting.  

  • The meeting recording shows up in the meeting chat or channel conversation (if you’re meeting in a channel).

Note: For now, guests and external attendees can view the recording only if it's explicitly shared with them. 

 

Who can start or stop a recording?

Anyone who meets the following criteria can start or stop a recording, even if the meeting organizer isn't present.

  • Has one of the following licenses: Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, E5, F3, A1, A3, A5, M365 Business, Business Premium, or Business Essentials.

  • Has recording enabled by an IT admin.

  • Isn't a guest or from another organization.

 

Type of user

Can start recording?

Can stop recording?

Meeting organizer

  • Yes

  • Yes

Person from same org

  • Yes

  • Yes

Person from another org or company

  • No

  • No

Guest

  • No

  • No

Anonymous

  • No

  • No

Notes: 

  • Recording continues even if the person who started the recording has left the meeting.

  • The recording stops automatically once everyone leaves the meeting. If someone forgets to leave, the recording automatically ends after four hours.

  • If one of the participants has a policy for compliance recording, the meeting will be recorded according to the policy even if that participant is from another org.

 

Manage the expiration of a meeting recording

Your admin's settings determine whether (and when) a recording will expire. If your recording has an expiration date, you'll see a message indicating that when the recording pops into the meeting chat after the meeting ends. 

Image showing "recording is about to expire" message.

Open the details pane to view or change the expiration date.

There are a couple of different ways to get there:

  1. Click on the recording to open it in your browser. Once the browser page has opened, select Info icon in the upper right to open the details pane.

  2. Or, go to My files in your OneDrive or SharePoint site and view as a list. Mouse over the recording in question, select Show actions (the three vertical dots to the right of the file name), and then choose Details.

When the details pane is open, look for Expiration date. Here's where you'll see the date that's currently set. 

Details pane showing recording expiration date

Open the drop-down to see your options for changing the date. Extend the recording's availability for a certain number of days, or pick a specific date on the calendar. You can also choose No expiration if you don't want it to be deleted.

Drop-down menu for recording expiration date

 

Notes: 

  • The message indicating that your recording will expire will persist on the recording in the chat even if you remove the expiration date. But don't worry—if you've selected No expiration, it won't expire.

  • The owner of the recording will get an email when it expires. At that point, they'll have up to 90 days to recover it from the recycle bin. Once recovered, the recording will no longer expire automatically.

  • Watching the recording won't affect the expiration date.

  • More info for admins can be found here.

 

Privacy

When a meeting recording starts, Teams shows a notification to all participants on the Teams desktop, web, and mobile apps, as well as to people who joined via phone.

In some places, you legally need to get everyone's permission before you can record them. Make sure you know the rules before you start.

For more information, see the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

 

Troubleshoot recordings

If you're having problems recording a meeting, you'll probably need the help of an IT admin to work through them. Keep these things in mind as you move forward:

  • Both the meeting organizer and recorder must have one of the following licenses: Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, E5, F3, A1, A3, A5, M365 Business, Business Premium, or Business Essentials.

  • An IT admin must provide a recording license to both the meeting organizer and the recorder.

  • Guests or federated users can't record meetings or calls.

 

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