How to get the transcript of a Teams meeting

If you are the organizer

1. 1Start transcription in the meeting. Open More actions (the three dots) → Record and transcribe → Start transcription, and confirm the spoken language. Transcription does not need a recording; they are two separate switches.
2. 2Find it after the call. Open the meeting chat, or the meeting in your Teams calendar, and go to the Recap tab.
3. 3Download the file. Choose Download: .docx is a Word file with names and times, .vtt is the subtitle format.

Organizers and co-organizers can always start transcription; presenters can too if the meeting options allow it. People from another organization and anonymous guests cannot start it (Microsoft Support: live transcription in Teams).

The file itself lives in the organizer’s OneDrive, next to the recording if there is one. Need plain text from a .vtt? Paste it into our VTT to text tool: it strips the timing lines and keeps who said what.

Why the download is greyed out

Four reasons cover almost every case:

• You are not the organizer or a co-organizer. By default only they can download the .docx or .vtt. Others in the same company can usually read the transcript in Recap but not download it, unless the admin’s policy allows it.
• You joined from another company, or as a guest. Microsoft is direct about this: a person from another tenant can see the live transcript during the meeting, but not view or download it afterwards. Anonymous participants get nothing after the call.
• Nobody pressed Start transcription, or the admin turned it off. Transcription is a policy on both sides: the organizer must have it on, and so must the person who starts it (Microsoft Learn: manage transcription). If it was never started, there is no file to download.
• The meeting is still being processed. Wait a few minutes after the call ends and open Recap again.

If you are not the organizer

You can ask the organizer to send the file. That works for one meeting, and it means waiting. Or you can keep your own notes from the start of the call, without anyone’s settings.

Trippi Notes is a Chrome extension. Open the Teams meeting in your browser, click the Trippi Notes icon, and it writes what it hears from the meeting tab: every line with the speaker’s name and the time. It does not join as a bot and it does not depend on the organizer’s transcription policy. When the call ends you have the transcript, a summary with decisions and tasks, and a draft of the follow-up email that you send from your own mail.

One honest limit: it works with Teams in the browser, not the desktop app. Open the invite link and choose Continue on this browser — Microsoft supports Teams on the web in Edge and Chrome (Microsoft Support: join without the app).

No bot appears in the participant list. Still, tell people you are taking notes. It is good manners, and in some places it is the law: AI note taker consent.

Teams transcript in another language

Teams transcribes in the spoken language you pick at the start. Translating the transcript into each person’s language is a Teams Premium feature, and the organizer needs the licence (Microsoft Learn).

If the meeting was in German and you read English best, Trippi Notes can show a second line in your language under each line and write the summary in English, whatever plan the organizer has. More on that: translate a meeting transcript.

What to do with the transcript next

• Minutes. Turn the raw lines into decisions and owners with our transcript to minutes tool, or follow how to write meeting minutes.
• An AI summary. Paste it into ChatGPT or Claude with a good prompt: prompts for ChatGPT, prompts for Claude.
• A record your team can find. Keep the minutes in one format every time: meeting minutes template.