How to record a Microsoft Teams meeting

Recording Microsoft Teams meetings

Microsoft Teams offers built-in recording capabilities that capture audio, video streams (up to four participants simultaneously), and screen sharing activities during your meetings. Recording options are available for both desktop and mobile users, though permissions vary based on your role and licensing. This article explains how to start and manage recordings, find your saved content, and understand important considerations like recording expiration and privacy concerns.

Starting a recording in Microsoft Teams

Recording a Teams meeting is straightforward, but it's important to understand who can record and how to initiate the process.

Desktop recording steps

Start or join your Teams meeting
Look for the meeting controls at the bottom of your screen
Click on More actions (the three dots "...")
Select Record and transcribe
Choose Start recording

Once initiated, all meeting participants will receive an automatic notification that the meeting is being recorded.

Mobile recording steps

If you're using the Teams mobile app:

Tap on More options (three dots) in the meeting controls
Select Start recording
Everyone in the meeting will be notified that recording has started

Who can record a Teams meeting?

Not everyone in a meeting has the permission to record. Recording capabilities are limited to:

Meeting organizers
People from the same organization with proper licenses
Users who have recording enabled by their IT admin

The following users cannot start recordings:

Guests
People from other organizations
Anonymous participants

To be eligible to record, you must have one of these licenses:

Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, E5, F3
Office 365 A1, A3, A5
Microsoft 365 Business, Business Premium, or Business Essentials

Teams Premium recording controls

For organizations with Teams Premium, meeting organizers have additional control over who can record meetings:

When scheduling a meeting, go to Calendar and select New meeting
Add participants to the meeting
Click More options
Set meeting participants as presenters and co-organizers as needed
Navigate to Recording & transcript
Under Who can record and transcribe, choose your preferred option from the dropdown menu
Click Save

Stopping a recording

To end a meeting recording:

Go to the meeting controls
Select More actions (three dots)
Click Record and transcribe
Choose either:
- Stop recording to end both recording and live transcription
- Stop transcription to only stop the live transcription while continuing to record

The recording will automatically stop if:

Everyone leaves the meeting
Four hours have passed with participants still in the meeting

Finding your recordings

After a meeting is recorded, you can find it in several places:

In the meeting chat where the recording was made
In the channel conversation (if the meeting was held in a channel)
On the meeting organizer's OneDrive for Business account

For mobile users, you can also find meeting recordings by opening past meeting details in your Teams calendar.

Important recording considerations

What gets captured (and what doesn't)

Meeting recordings will capture:

Audio of all participants
Video streams (up to four participants simultaneously)
Screen sharing activity

Recordings won't capture:

Whiteboards and annotations
Shared notes
Content shared by apps
Videos or animations embedded in PowerPoint Live presentations

Recording expiration management

Your organization's admin settings determine how long recordings are kept before they expire. To manage expiration dates:

Locate the recording in the meeting chat
Open the recording in Stream
Look for the expiration countdown beneath the video
Change the expiration by selecting a timeframe from the dropdown menu
Alternatively, select Remove expiration to keep it indefinitely

Note that you must have edit permission for the recording to change its expiration date.

Privacy and sharing considerations

When recording Teams meetings, keep in mind:

All participants receive a notification when recording starts
Depending on your region, you may need everyone's permission before recording
By default, only meeting organizers and co-organizers can download or delete recordings
For external participants, recordings can only be viewed if explicitly shared with them

Enhance your meeting experience with Circleback

Circleback is an AI-powered meeting assistant that works with Microsoft Teams to provide automated meeting notes, action item extraction, and advanced transcription with support for over 100 languages.

Using Circleback with Microsoft Teams

Circleback offers two main ways to capture Teams meetings:

Calendar Integration: After connecting your calendar, Circleback automatically detects events with online meeting links. You can select which meeting types you want it to join from Settings.
Direct Link Entry: You can manually add Circleback to a Teams meeting by selecting New meeting → Invite Circleback in Circleback, pasting your Teams meeting link, and clicking Add Circleback.