A Teams recording you download has no captions in it. Microsoft says so in the support article on playing and sharing recordings: "Captions aren't captured in recordings or downloads. However, you can turn them on while viewing a recording in Teams or in the browser on its Microsoft 365 video player page."
The captions exist, but only inside Microsoft's player. Hand the .mp4 to a client, drop it into an edit, or post it anywhere outside OneDrive and SharePoint, and the words are gone. If you need a file that shows them wherever it plays, you burn them in yourself — using the two things Microsoft documents giving you: the recording, and the transcript as a .vtt file.
Before you start
Transcription had to be running during the meeting. Recording alone does not produce a transcript. Microsoft's admin page on transcription and captions is explicit about the consequence: "If recording is turned on, but transcription is turned off, the recording doesn't have a transcript file stored next to it. Also, when viewing the recording playback in Stream, captions can't be turned on." If nobody started transcription, there is nothing to burn and no way to generate it after the fact from within the meeting.
Live captions do not count as a transcript. This is the single most common misunderstanding, and Microsoft's live captions page opens by heading it off: "Teams doesn't save captions. If you'd like a transcript of the meeting, turn on transcription. You'll be able to download the transcript after the meeting." Its own FAQ is blunter still. Asked whether Teams stores any caption data: "No. Caption data is permanently deleted after the meeting is over."
You need download rights — and the official pages do not fully agree on who has them. The support article on downloading says "Only the meeting organizer can download the meeting recording." A different support article says "By default, only meeting organizers and co-organizers can download or delete the recording." For the transcript specifically, the live transcription page states that "By default, meeting organizers and co-organizers can download it as a .docx or .vtt file," and its permissions table gives a person from the same organization "No, but organizers can configure who can download on Stream." It also notes that "People who call into a meeting can't view the transcript." If you are not the organizer, sort that out first.
Don't sit on it. Recordings expire. Microsoft's expiration policy page states that "Meeting recordings and transcripts have a default expiration time of 120 days," while the end-user article says simply that "Your admin settings determine a recording's expiration." One clarification is worth quoting because so many people assume the opposite: "Watching the recording won't affect the expiration date."
Step 1: Download the recording
Where the file sits depends on the meeting type, and Microsoft documents three separate destinations:
- Meetings and events — "All recording files are saved to the organizer's OneDrive Recordings folder," and this holds "even if the organizer didn't attend the meeting or event."
- Channel meetings — "the recording is stored in the SharePoint Teams site documentation library in a folder named Recordings."
- 1:1 and group calls — "For 1-1 call and group calls, recording files go to the OneDrive account of the user who selected Record."
What you are downloading is an MP4. The only place Microsoft names the extension is a playback step: "The recording is an .mp4 file". Note that this names the container and nothing else — Microsoft does not state which video or audio codecs a Teams recording uses, so if something downstream depends on that, check the official documentation rather than assuming.
If the download option is missing entirely, that may be deliberate. Admins can block it org-wide, and the result is described as leaving users with "browser-only access to play the meeting recordings or view transcripts with no ability to download or sync files or access them through apps." That is a policy decision, not a bug — ask your admin.
Step 2: Download the transcript as a .vtt
The transcript is a separate download with its own route. Per the live transcription page: "When the meeting is over, the transcript is immediately available in the meeting event on the calendar." From there you get two formats, .docx or .vtt. Take the .vtt — the .docx is for reading, while the VTT carries the cue timings a burn-in step needs.
Do not go looking for that file in the Recordings folder alongside the MP4. Microsoft's article on managing video transcripts explains why you will never find it there: "There is no direct access to see or manage the captions and transcript file in the file explorer for OneDrive for Business or SharePoint." The caption file that powers playback is stored with the video but managed only through the player. The calendar download is the documented way to get a copy in your hands.
Step 3: Fix the text before you burn it
Burned-in text is permanent, so the proofreading pass matters more here than it would for a sidecar file.
The transcript "includes each speaker's name and time stamp," per Microsoft's description of live transcription. But editing it inside Teams has a documented cost: "Teams live transcripts edited in this way lose the speaker attribution of who said what during the meeting." If speaker labels matter to your finished video, that is worth knowing before you click Edit rather than after.
Step 4: Burn the transcript into the picture
This step happens outside Teams entirely. Feed the tool your downloaded MP4 and the .vtt, and the text is rendered into the frames themselves — hard subtitles, no track to toggle, visible in any player on any device.
Try it right here
Runs in your browser. Your file is not uploaded anywhere.
It runs inside your browser tab: the recording is read from disk, processed locally, and handed back. Nothing is uploaded to a server, which is usually the deciding factor for an internal meeting recording. The full tool list and the rest of the how-to guides cover the neighbouring cases.
Common mistakes
- Expecting the downloaded MP4 to carry captions because you saw them during playback. You saw the transcript rendered by Microsoft's player, not a caption track inside the file.
- Copying the recording and expecting captions to follow. Two official pages flag this with slightly different wording, and both are worth reading. The admin page: "The transcription link remains for the lifetime of the file in most cases, but can be broken if the video file is copied within the same OneDrive or SharePoint site. This action would result in captions not displaying on the copied video file." The storage page: "Closed captions aren't fully supported if the Teams meeting recording is moved or copied from its original location in OneDrive or SharePoint." Download the transcript before you move anything.
- Hunting for an SRT export. There isn't one — the documented choices are
.docxand.vtt. If a downstream tool insists on SubRip, convert the file yourself with VTT to SRT. For the full picture on the two formats Teams does offer, see Teams transcript downloads: .docx or .vtt. - Uploading a VTT back into Teams instead of burning it. You can upload your own WebVTT file on a video's player page, but that only feeds Microsoft's player again — the downloadable file is unchanged. It also comes with limits: "Additional fields, such as notes, comments, styles, etc., are not supported and will be removed from the file upon upload," and the documented error list includes "Your file size exceeds the 4MB limit that this feature supports."
- Leaving it until the recording expires. See the expiration figures above, and remember that watching it changes nothing.
FAQ
Why does my downloaded Teams recording have no subtitles? Because Teams does not put them there. The official wording is "Captions aren't captured in recordings or downloads." Captions are rendered by the Teams and Microsoft 365 players from a transcript file stored beside the video, not baked into the MP4 you download.
Can Teams burn the transcript into the video for me? Nothing in Microsoft's documentation describes an option that does this. The documented behaviour is captions in the player and a separately downloadable transcript. Rendering the words into the picture is a step you take on the downloaded file.
Where is the caption file in my OneDrive Recordings folder? It is stored with the video but hidden from the file list: "There is no direct access to see or manage the captions and transcript file in the file explorer for OneDrive for Business or SharePoint." Download the transcript from the meeting event on the calendar instead.
Can I get an SRT out of Teams?
Not directly. The documented download formats are .docx and .vtt. Convert the VTT afterwards if you need SubRip — burning subtitles into a video accepts the VTT as-is, so you only need the conversion when something else in your pipeline demands it.
Can I undo a burn-in later?
No. The text is part of the picture at that point. Keep the original download and the original .vtt so you can always regenerate the burned copy with different styling.
Teams behaviour cited from Microsoft's official support and Learn articles on recording playback and downloads, live transcription, live captions, transcript and caption management, recording storage and permissions, and recording expiration, checked 16 September 2026. Verify against the official pages before relying on them.
