Transcribe a Microsoft Teams recording

Teams saves meeting recordings as video. For a clean interview transcript you need the audio. Here is where the recording lives, how to convert it and when the built-in Teams transcript is enough.

Try it free How it works

Transcribe 30 minutes free. No card needed.

Where Teams keeps the recording

Recordings of regular meetings go to the organiser’s OneDrive, in the Recordings folder. Channel meeting recordings go to the channel’s SharePoint site. Download the video from there if you have permission.

Your IT department can set recordings to expire after a while, so download interviews soon after the meeting.

Turning the MP4 into an audio file

Download the recording as MP4.
Open the free VLC media player and choose Media, then Convert / Save.
Add the MP4, pick the "Audio - MP3" profile and a destination.
Upload the MP3 to Themera. It is a fraction of the size of the video.

Teams transcript or your own?

If transcription was switched on during the meeting, the organiser can download the Teams transcript as a Word or VTT file, depending on your organisation’s settings. MAXQDA can import Teams VTT files directly.

Your own transcript is worth it when no live transcription ran, when you want to correct passages while listening, or when you need speaker codes, line numbers and pseudonymisation for an appendix.

Interviewing over Teams: getting clean audio

Ask the participant to join from their own device with a headset, not from a laptop speaker in a shared room.
If several people sit in one room, one microphone per person or a good conference microphone beats a single laptop.
Mute notifications and keep your own microphone muted while the participant talks at length; keyboard noise ends up in the transcript.
Record a short test call first and listen to it, especially if you have not used the setup before.

Consent still matters

Teams alerts attendees automatically when a recording starts. That does not replace informed consent to recording, transcription and analysis. See GDPR and transcription for what to check.