How to Transcribe a Teams Meeting, Live or After Recording

To transcribe a Teams meeting, select More actions, then Transcribe, or start a recording, which transcribes automatically. The transcript goes to the organizer's OneDrive and appears in the meeting chat and Recap tab. Guests and people from other organizations cannot start it. For them, Reline transcribes the next meeting from their own computer, with no bot.

1. Join the meeting in the Teams desktop app.
2. In the meeting controls, select More actions, then Transcribe.
3. Check the spoken language, then select Confirm. Pick the language people are actually speaking: the setting applies to everyone, and a mismatch hurts accuracy.
4. Everyone in the meeting sees a notice that it is being transcribed. To read along, open More actions, select the arrow next to the transcription entry, then Show transcript.
5. To stop, open More actions again and stop it from Recording or Transcribing. Transcription also stops by itself when everyone leaves.

Starting a recording also starts transcription, so you do not need both. Microsoft says the live view is only on Teams for desktop. The mobile app can start and stop transcription and shows the transcript after the meeting, and Microsoft's steps do not cover Teams on the web.

Roles: guests cannot start it either. With Teams Premium or a Copilot license, organizers can choose who can record and transcribe: organizers and co-organizers, also presenters, or no one.

License: Microsoft's transcription help names no specific license for plain transcription, only roles and policy. Recording does have a list: both the organizer and the person recording need Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, E5, F3, A1, A3 or A5, or Microsoft 365 Business, Business Premium or Business Essentials. The add-ons change the extras: live translated transcripts need Teams Premium on the organizer, intelligent recap needs Teams Premium or Microsoft Copilot, and Copilot itself is a separate add-on license.

Policy: transcription is both a per-organizer and a per-user setting. The organizer must have it on, and so must the person who starts it. Microsoft says the setting is on by default for new meeting policies, and 1:1 calls follow a separate calling policy.

Microsoft lists a tooltip for each case, so check the one on the option first. The usual reasons:

• You are a guest, in a different organization from the organizer, or not signed in.
• Your admin's policy or the organizer's does not allow transcription, or a recent policy change has not taken effect yet.
• You are not a presenter, and only organizers and presenters can start it in this meeting.
• The organizer limited recording and transcribing to organizers and co-organizers, or set it to no one.
• The organizer turned Copilot off for the meeting, which also turns off recording and transcription.

The transcript is stored with any recording in the organizer's OneDrive, or in the channel's SharePoint site for a channel meeting.

You can. Start transcription on its own with the steps above: no recording is made, you still get a saved transcript, and everyone still sees the notice. Two other options also make no recording, but neither leaves a transcript:

• Live captions: subtitles on your own screen, from More actions. Teams does not save them.
• Copilot set to Only during the meeting: notes and answers during the meeting for people with a Copilot license. The speech-to-text data is not saved after the meeting.

Copilot does not write a transcript by itself: it is an AI assistant, and it needs a separate add-on license. What happens depends on the option the organizer picks in the meeting options, under Copilot and other AI:

• During and after the meeting: selecting Copilot in the meeting controls prompts you to start transcription. Once someone transcribes, licensed people can use Copilot during the meeting and afterwards from the meeting chat and Recap tab, and the transcript is saved as usual. Under Microsoft's default admin policy this option is enforced, so organizers cannot change it.
• Only during the meeting: Copilot starts when you select it, with no transcript needed. The speech-to-text data is not saved, so Copilot is not in the Recap tab afterwards unless someone also transcribed or recorded. Your organization may still retain Copilot prompts and responses.
• Off: nobody can use Copilot, and nobody can record or transcribe the meeting.

Microsoft also says Copilot does not work in meetings hosted outside your organization, so a Copilot license does not help when you are a guest.

It depends on what exists. A recording normally starts transcription automatically, so look for a transcript first.

1. There is a transcript: open the meeting on your Teams calendar, the meeting chat or the Recap tab. Organizers and co-organizers can download a .docx or .vtt file.
2. A recording but no transcript: open the video in OneDrive or SharePoint. If you own it or can edit it, open Video settings on the player page and select Generate. Microsoft limits this to videos under 4 GB and under 4 hours, admins can turn it off, and the article does not say whether it works on a Teams recording made without a transcript. The result downloads as a WebVTT file.
3. No Generate option: download the recording and upload it to Word, under Home, Dictate, Transcribe, Upload audio. Word takes .wav, .mp4, .m4a and .mp3 files, separates speakers, and allows 300 minutes of uploads a month with a Microsoft 365 subscription (30,000 with a Copilot license). It works in Word for the web in Edge or Chrome, and in Word for Microsoft 365 on Windows in commercial tenants.
4. No recording and no transcript: nothing is left to transcribe. Teams does not save captions.

Attendees from the organizer's organization can usually watch a recording but not download it, and people from other organizations have no access until the organizer shares it. If you are not the organizer, start by asking for the file.

With a personal Microsoft account, Microsoft's help covers live captions, not a saved transcript. Microsoft 365 Personal, Family and Premium subscribers can record, and the recording stays in the chat for 30 days. So the route is to record, download the file and upload it to Transcribe in Word for the web, because Word on Windows only offers it in commercial tenants.

When Teams will not let you start or keep a transcript, you can capture the meeting on your own computer. The Reline desktop app (Windows, Mac and Linux (beta)) records your microphone and the meeting audio locally and transcribes them live. Nothing joins the meeting, and you do not need a Copilot license, the organizer's policy or an account in their organization.

1. Install the Reline desktop app and sign in. You can start on the Free plan.
2. Allow the microphone when asked. On a Mac, also allow system audio.
3. Join your meeting as usual, in the Teams app or in Teams on the web.
4. Press Record in Reline. The live transcript starts as people talk, in 60+ languages with automatic language detection.
5. Stop when the meeting ends. You get the transcript, an AI summary next to it and the kept audio, with a play button on every transcript line.

Speaker names: the transcript is labeled Me vs Other (your microphone vs the meeting audio), and Reline does not read names from Teams. In a group meeting, open Who is on the other side beside the record button and choose Separate speakers (beta): Reline numbers each voice on the meeting side (an estimate), and you click a voice to name it yourself.

• No transcripts of past meetings: it does not take a Teams recording or any other audio or video file.
• No video: Reline keeps audio and a transcript, not a screen recording.
• No speaker names from Teams: the beta Separate speakers option only numbers voices for you to name.
• On Windows it records the whole default output, not one window, so other sounds on your PC are captured too.
• No on-device AI: transcription, summaries and storage run in the cloud. Only the capture is local.
• The transcript stays in Reline: it does not appear in the Teams chat or Recap tab, and you press Record yourself.

Teams' notice only covers its own transcription and recording. Reline puts no notice in the meeting, so the notice is on you. Several US states, California among them, require every party to agree before a call is recorded, and in the EU you need a lawful basis under the GDPR and should say why you record. Rules differ by country and state, so check the rules where everyone on the call is. The simple habit: say at the start of the meeting that you are recording for notes, and stop if someone objects. As a guest you are in another company's meeting, so ask the organizer first.