A Teams transcript that never appears is almost always a settings problem, not a processing delay. Microsoft's admin documentation states the most common cause in one sentence: "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."
That sentence is worth reading twice. Recording and transcription are two separate switches, and a meeting can be recorded perfectly while producing no transcript at all.
Two different things are called "transcript"
Before troubleshooting, work out which of the two features you are waiting on, because they fail for completely different reasons.
Live transcription during a meeting. Microsoft describes it as "a real-time written record of what was said during a meeting or event. Participants can view the transcript after the meeting along with timestamps and speaker attribution." This is the one tied to the meeting itself.
Automatic generation for a video sitting in OneDrive or SharePoint. This is the transcript produced for a video file on its player page, and it has its own published size and language rules.
A third thing gets mistaken for both: live captions. Microsoft is blunt that these are not saved — "Live captions provide real-time subtitles during the meeting, but Teams doesn't save captions." Its support FAQ answers "Does Teams store any caption data?" with "No. Caption data is permanently deleted after the meeting is over." If you watched captions scroll by during the call, that is not evidence a transcript exists.
The fastest fix: confirm transcription was actually on
If nothing appeared after a meeting, start with the switch rather than the file. Microsoft describes transcription as a live feature that captures what is said as the meeting runs, and the admin page above ties the existence of the transcript file to transcription having been on.
There is also one non-obvious dependency that catches whole tenants. The same note appears at the top of three separate Microsoft admin pages: "When organizers turn off Microsoft Copilot in Teams meetings and events, recording and transcription are also turned off." An organizer who disabled Copilot for privacy reasons switched off transcription in the same move, usually without realising it.
Finally, check whether the transcript exists but is invisible to you. Microsoft's table of who can do what lists a person from another tenant as able to view real-time transcription but not to view or download the transcript after the meeting, and anonymous participants as unable to do either. The same page adds: "People who call into a meeting can't view the transcript." Nothing failed in those cases — you are simply not on the access list.
When the file is in OneDrive or SharePoint: size, language, extension
For automatic generation on a stored video, Microsoft publishes three gates. The first two sit in the same paragraph:
"The size limit for running automatic transcripts is 1GB and 4 hours. If the file size/duration exceeds this limit, you may want to find an alternative method for generating transcripts. Additionally, the automatic generation might fail if the language spoken in the video is either not supported or could not be recognized."
Note what that last clause admits: an unrecognised language is a documented failure mode, not a bug to report.
Further down that same support page, the number changes: "Transcript and closed caption generation are only supported for videos less than 4GB in size and less than 4 hours." So one page gives both 1GB and 4GB; the four-hour duration is consistent in both places. Plan against the lower figure — being wrong in that direction costs you nothing.
This matters more than it looks. Microsoft's own storage-planning guidance states "The size of a one-hour recording is 400 MB", which puts a four-hour recording near 1.6 GB — above one published ceiling and below the other. For the separate caps that stop a recording mid-meeting, see the 4-hour and 1.5 GB recording limit.
The third gate is the file extension. Microsoft lists these as supported for generating transcripts and captions on a stored video:
"mts", "m2ts", "ts", "3g2", "3gp", "3gp2", "3gpp", "asf", "wmv",
"avi", "m4v", "mov", "mp4", "mp4v", "ogg", "webm", "movie",
"mkv", "mpg", "mpeg"If your file's extension is outside that list, a container swap into one that is on it — .mp4 is — is the only lever you have.
Try it right here
Runs in your browser. Your file is not uploaded anywhere.
This runs in your browser tab: the file is read from disk, re-encoded locally and handed back, with nothing uploaded to a conversion service. Worth being precise, though — webm and mkv are both on Microsoft's list, so if that is your source, the extension is not your problem and the size and language gates above are the better suspects. The full set of browser-side converters is at all Clapr tools.
The language lists are not one list
This is where most guesswork goes wrong. Microsoft's video transcript page publishes two different language lists, for two different triggers.
Automatic transcription — the kind that runs without anyone asking — covers eight, verbatim: "Chinese (Cantonese), Danish (Denmark), English (United States), French (France), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Spain)."
Manual generation is wider. The same page says "Video owners can generate a transcript and captions file for videos spoken in 28 different languages and locales", then lists them — including English in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the UK, plus German, Hindi, Korean, Polish, Russian, Swedish and others.
The practical consequence: a video in British English is outside the eight-language automatic list but inside the 28-language manual one. If nothing generated on its own, opening the video's player page and generating as the owner is a different code path with different coverage.
And a warning against mixing sources: live transcription in meetings uses a third, much longer list published on separate admin and support pages. Three lists, three scopes — check the page that matches your scenario in the official documentation rather than assuming one list covers all of it.
Other causes, in order of likelihood
- You are looking in the file explorer. Microsoft states that "The captions and transcript file is stored with the video in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint" but also that "There is no direct access to see or manage the captions and transcript file in the file explorer for OneDrive for Business or SharePoint." Seeing only an
.mp4in the Recordings folder proves nothing. - The video was copied or moved. Two official pages describe this with different conditions. One says the transcription link "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 other says "Closed captions aren't fully supported if the Teams meeting recording is moved or copied from its original location in OneDrive or SharePoint."
- Service-level throttling. Microsoft states it "reserves the right to restrict transcription and translation services, with reasonable notice, in order to limit excessive use and/or fraud, and to maintain service performance."
How to tell it worked
Open the meeting event on the calendar rather than the folder. Microsoft's guidance is that "the transcript is immediately available in the meeting event on the calendar" once the meeting ends, and "By default, meeting organizers and co-organizers can download it as a .docx or .vtt file." If you get a download option in either format, generation succeeded.
FAQ
Why is there no transcript when the meeting was recorded? Because they are separate switches. Microsoft documents that when recording is on and transcription is off, "the recording doesn't have a transcript file stored next to it", and captions can't be turned on during playback in Stream.
Does turning off Copilot stop transcription? Yes. Microsoft's admin pages state that when organizers turn off Copilot in Teams meetings and events, "recording and transcription are also turned off."
How long can a video be before automatic transcription fails? Microsoft's page gives four hours in both places it states a limit, but two different sizes — 1GB in one section and 4GB in another. Plan against 1GB.
Can I get an SRT file out of Teams?
Not directly — the documented download formats are .docx and .vtt, covered in downloading a Teams transcript. Run the VTT through VTT to SRT if an editor needs SRT.
My captions were on during the call — where did they go? Nowhere. Teams does not save captions, and Microsoft states caption data "is permanently deleted after the meeting is over." Only transcription produces a file.
All limits and quotations above come from Microsoft's official Teams and Microsoft 365 documentation, checked 16 September 2026. Microsoft revises these pages often — verify against the current page before relying on a number. More troubleshooting walkthroughs: fix guides.
