Getting the MP4 out of Teams
Teams recordings are saved as MP4 video files in Microsoft 365. For a regular meeting the file goes to the OneDrive of the person who started the recording, in a Recordings folder. For a meeting held in a Teams channel it goes to that channel's SharePoint site. Either way a link to the recording also appears in the meeting chat.
Open the recording from the chat or from OneDrive or SharePoint, and use the Download option to save the MP4 to your computer. Then upload it here. The audio is extracted from the video automatically, so you do not need to convert it.
If Download is missing or greyed out, you probably only have permission to view the recording. Ask the meeting organiser or the person who recorded it to download it for you or give you edit access. Some organisations also set recordings to expire after a period, so download anything you want to keep.
When to use this instead of Teams transcription
Teams has its own transcription on some Microsoft 365 licences, and it can be turned on during a meeting. If it was on and the result works for you, there is no reason to redo it. Uploading the recording here helps in other situations:
- Nobody started Teams transcription during the meeting, and all you have is the recording.
- Your licence does not include Teams transcription, or a guest recorded the meeting.
- You need the text as a Word document, PDF, CSV, or SRT/VTT subtitles for the recorded video.
- The meeting was in a language other than the one Teams was set to, or switched between languages. Over 90 languages are supported, auto-detected or chosen per file.
- You want to correct the text against a synced player and rename speakers before sharing it.
Recording Teams meetings with clean audio
Teams records the mixed audio of the call as people heard it, so each participant's microphone shapes the transcript. Ask regular attendees to use a headset rather than the laptop's built-in mic, especially in open offices. Teams noise suppression helps with keyboards and background chatter.
Meeting rooms are the weak spot. When six people sit around one room device, they reach the recording through a single microphone at different distances. People near the device come out clearly, and people at the far end of the table may be faint. If the room meeting matters, ask people to move closer or speak up. Remind everyone to unmute and finish speaking before someone else starts.
Shared screens with sound, such as a video played in the meeting, end up in the recording too. Their speech will be transcribed along with the meeting.
Working with the transcript
The transcript comes back in timestamped paragraphs with a player that highlights the current line. Click a line to replay it, and fix names, acronyms and internal project terms in place.
Speaker identification labels who said what, and is available on paid plans (Plus, Unlimited) or with a Minute Pack, not on Free or the no-sign-up trial. If you know how many people spoke, enter the number to help it separate the voices. Then rename each speaker once, for example Speaker 2 to "Finance – Mark", and every line updates. People sharing one room microphone are harder to tell apart, so check those labels.
For the export, DOCX suits minutes you will edit before sending, PDF suits a record to file with the project, and SRT or VTT lets you add captions to the recorded MP4. Timestamps and speaker names can be switched on or off. The AI prompt export copies the transcript with a prompt you can paste into ChatGPT or Claude for a summary. Folders let you keep all recordings for one project together and export them in bulk.