Microsoft Teams Recordings Location
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If you've ever finished a Teams meeting and then spent ten minutes hunting for the recording, you're dealing with a quirk that trips up a lot of people. Teams doesn't save recordings to a single place. Where your recording ends up depends entirely on what type of meeting it was, and sometimes on whether the organizer even has a OneDrive account.
This guide covers every storage scenario, gives you the exact folder paths to check, and explains what happens in the edge cases, including what to do when the recording seems to have disappeared entirely.
Where do Microsoft Teams store recordings?
Microsoft Teams stores recordings in either OneDrive or SharePoint, depending on how the meeting was set up. The rule changed in early 2021, when Microsoft retired the old Microsoft Stream storage system. Everything recorded since then lands in one of these two places.
The simplest way to know where to look is to identify the meeting type first:
Meeting type
Where the recording is saved
Standard (non-channel) meeting
Organizer's OneDrive — Recordings folder
Channel meeting
SharePoint — channel's Files tab, Recordings folder
1:1 call or group call
Recorder's OneDrive — Recordings folder
Webinar or town hall (pre-publish)
Organizer's OneDrive
Webinar or town hall (after VOD publish)
SharePoint Embedded storage
Teams Rooms meeting (Meet Now)
Teams Room's OneDrive (if licensed); otherwise co-organizer's OneDrive
The sections below break each of these down in detail, with the folder paths you need.
Storage Location by Meeting Type
Standard (Non-Channel) Meetings
For any meeting that isn't held inside a Teams channel — scheduled meetings, Outlook-booked meetings, recurring meetings, delegate-created meetings, and Meet Now sessions — the recording saves to the organizer's OneDrive, specifically in a folder called Recordings. This is true even if the organizer wasn't present when the recording was started, and even if someone else in the meeting clicked the record button.
Co-organizers have the same editing rights as the organizer on the recording file. Everyone else who was invited (except external participants) receives a personally shared link automatically once the recording is ready. External participants don't get automatic access — the organizer needs to add them manually.
The OneDrive path to check: OneDrive > Recordings
Channel Meetings
Channel meetings are different. Because a Teams channel is a shared workspace, it makes more sense for the recording to live in a shared location rather than one person's personal storage.
Channel meeting recordings are saved to the SharePoint site associated with the team, inside the channel's document library. The folder path follows this structure: Team name > Channel name > Documents > Recordings
You can reach this either through SharePoint directly or by navigating to the channel in Teams, opening the Files tab, and clicking into the Recordings folder.
Anyone who is a member of the channel can access these recordings without needing a separate share link.
1:1 Calls and Group Calls
Calls work differently from meetings. For a 1:1 call or an ad-hoc group call — the kind you start directly from someone's profile or from the Calls tab — the recording saves to the OneDrive of whoever clicked Record, not the organizer, because calls don't have a formal organizer concept.
The path is the same: OneDrive > Recordings
Webinars and Town Halls
Before an organizer publishes a webinar or town hall recording through the Video on Demand (VOD) feature, the recording sits in the organizer's OneDrive Recordings folder, the same as a standard meeting.
Once published via VOD, the recording moves to SharePoint Embedded File Storage Containers. At that point, only the event organizer can manage past recordings through their calendar. If you're an admin who needs to delete a published VOD recording, you'll need to do it through the Teams admin center under Analytics and reports, not through SharePoint directly.
Microsoft Teams Rooms Meetings
When someone starts a Meet Now session from inside a Teams Rooms device, the room itself becomes the meeting organizer. By default, the recording saves to the Teams Room resource account's OneDrive — if that account has one.
The practical catch: meeting participants typically don't have permissions to that file. Microsoft's guidance is to avoid assigning a OneDrive license to the Teams Rooms resource account for this reason. Without a OneDrive, the recording falls back to the co-organizer's or recording initiator's OneDrive, where participants can actually access it.
*Need real-time notes instead? Enable transcription in teams to skip recording storage hassles
Non-channel meetings can be hosted for reasons like:
Being on a call with a team member from a different department
Doing a group video meeting
Calling a person who isn't in your company
How to find the Teams meeting recordings?
Now that we've covered the basics of the Teams recording location let's take a closer look at how to find them.
1. Teams recording location for Channel meetings
These are open-door meetings that occur within a Teams channel and are therefore accessible to anyone in the channel, even if not invited.
As earlier indicated, Teams recordings for channel meetings are stored in Sharepoint. To locate the recording, follow the following steps:
Go to Microsoft Teams and search for your specific team and channel.
In the channel, on the ‘Files’ tab from the top navigation bar.
Then, select the ‘Recordings’ folder.
2. Teams recording location for all other meetings
Non-channel meetings, also called standard, personal, or private meetings, keep meetings private to the meeting attendees.
The recording will be in the meeting recorder’s OneDrive folder, and they’ll be notified when the recording is available.
Open the OneDrive directory on your computer.
Next, click on the ‘Recordings’ folder. Here all of your meeting recordings will be listed.
Important notes about Teams recording:
Teams will keep recording even after the user who started the recording has left the meeting.
A recording will expire and be automatically deleted after a predetermined period. The admin sets the duration of time that the Record will be accessible.
The recording feature does not capture whiteboards and shared notes.
Teams automatically stop recording after everyone leaves the meeting.
Teams won’t commence recording until you’ve obtained everyone’s permission to record the meeting in some organizations.
Notta offers the most integrated AI meeting notes, summaries, and action items so nothing gets missed.
Play, download, share, and delete a Teams recording
Once you have located a Microsoft Teams recording, there are several actions you can take with it, such as playing, downloading, sharing, and deleting it. Here are the steps to perform each action.
Play a Teams recording
If the meeting is scheduled, you can find it in the Teams calendar, click the Details tab to access the recording and play it.
If it was a channel meeting, head to the channel conversation and click on the recording to play it.
Share a meeting recording
With Teams, you can share a meeting recording even with people who weren’t part of the meeting.
Go to OneDrive or SharePoint and find the recording.
Select it and click ‘Share’ at the top of the page.
You can 1) copy the link 2) enter the email addresses of the people you want to share with and click ‘Send’.
Download a meeting recording
Only the meeting organizer or the person who started the recording can download a meeting recording.
To download a recording on OneDrive or SharePoint:
Select one or more recording files you want to download.
Click the ‘Download’ button in the top navigation bar.
Select Save or Save As when prompted by your browser and choose the location where you want to save the recordings.
Tired of downloading recordings? Transcribe Microsoft teams recordings to create searchable notes.
Most computers will start downloading right away. However, there might also be a popup where you need to choose where the file is saved.
Delete a meeting recording
To delete a recording in OneDrive:
Go to the OneDrive website.
Click on the circle box that appears to select the File you want to delete.
Select ‘Delete’ on the bar at the top of the page.
To delete a recording in SharePoint:
Go to SharePoint, open the document library, and select the Teams recording you want to delete.
Right-click on the File and select ‘Delete’.
Click ‘OK’ on the delete confirmation dialog that appears.
Best alternative to recording Teams meetings
While you can use Teams to record your meeting, it has some limitations. For instance, the recording feature is limited to paid account users and only the meeting organizer can start a Teams recording.
So if you are looking for a better alternative to record a Teams meeting, I recommend using Notta and this is for good reasons.
With Notta, you can record the meeting as a participant, unlike Teams, which requires the approval of the meeting administrator. Besides, it generates a live transcript of all conversations, allowing you to fully engage with other participants without worrying about forgetting important details.
*Learn how to transcribe teams meetings live without recording at all
Below are the easy steps to record a Teams meeting with the Notta Web app:
Step 1: Launch Notta and click ‘Transcribe Live Meeting’ on the right sidebar.
Step 2: The following pop-up window will appear. Select a transcription language and enter your meeting link, then click 'Transcribe Now'.
Step 3: The Notta bot will join your meeting and start recording the conversations (you can also record meeting video with the paid version).
Notta AI meeting assistant records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings so everyone can stay engaged without missing important details.
Conclusion
We hope this guide helped you learn where Microsoft Teams recordings are stored, and how to share, download, and play these recordings.
If you’re looking for an easy way to record audio for your meetings and transcribe this audio instantly we recommend using Notta. Not only does it have high-quality transcription, but you can translate it into other languages, edit your transcript, and quickly share it with team members.
