Request for Assistance in Locating Teams Meeting Recording

Hi @Walubengo Muliro Singoro,

Thank you for getting back to me and for sharing the screenshot.

From what I can see in the image, you’re accessing Teams via a teams.live.com link, which usually means you’re signed in with a personal Microsoft account. At the same time, your question is posted under the Microsoft Teams for Business tag, which is mainly intended for work or school accounts. Because of that, there’s been a bit of confusion around the account type involved here.

Just to gently set expectations, my knowledge and hands-on experience are more focused on configuring and supporting Microsoft Teams for Business environments. Because of that, scenarios involving personal accounts may fall slightly outside what I can confidently troubleshoot in detail.

That said, I’d really encourage you to review the answer and the reference article shared earlier by Ruwim.B, as their guidance is much better aligned with personal account use cases and may help point you in the right direction.

If you try that and it still doesn’t resolve the issue, the best next step would be to post your question again and choose a tag that’s more specific to Microsoft Teams Free. That way, your question will reach the right group of experts and community members who have hands-on experience with personal account behavior and limitations.

Should Ruwim.B’s solution resolve the issue, you could click Accept Answer” on his reply to mark it as resolved.

And if you find my clarification helpful, you may also consider accepting this answer as well so the information remains visible and can help guide other users who may run into similar confusion around account types and channel selection. Our shared goal here is simply to support you as best we can within our respective scopes, while ensuring everything is clearly and correctly directed.

Thanks again for your understanding and for being part of the community. I hope everything gets sorted out smoothly for you.

Sorry, but you are an offer of the common misunderstanding regarding Teams account types.

If you are signed in to Teams with Microsoft 365 Personal, Microsoft 365 Family or Microsoft 365 Premium subscription, then call recording is available, but your account is Teams Personal account (aka Teams Free). With this Teams account recordings are only saved to Cloud, not to OneDrive.

https://insider.teams.com/blog/meeting-recording-in-microsoft-teams/

Recordings should be available for download from Cloud for 30 days and then deleted.

A link to watch and download recording file should be available in the meeting chat window. If this is not the case because you are no longer member of this chat, then the only available option to find the recording is to export your chat and file history from the Cloud.

https://teams.live.com/dataexport

After extracting the downloaded .tar file, recording, (if available), should be saved in the \media folder as a .mp4 file.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/export-or-delete-your-data-in-microsoft-teams-free-1ed6ac68-5fb4-41be-9861-1a4127fecf68

Good day @Walubengo Muliro Singoro and thank you for taking the time to share your concern.

I just wanted to gently clarify that this platform is a user‑to‑user support forum. While moderators and contributors here are always glad to help by sharing guidance and resources, we don’t have the ability to access Microsoft’s internal systems or trace recordings on behalf of users. However, I do hope I can share a bit of information that may help you check on your end.

For meetings that were not held in a channel, recordings are usually saved automatically to the organizer’s OneDrive, under the “Recordings” folder. If the meeting took place within a channel, the recording is typically stored in that channel’s SharePoint site, also in a folder named “Recordings,” with access based on the channel’s permissions.

Microsoft also provides a helpful reference that explains in more detail how Teams meeting recordings and transcripts are stored in OneDrive and SharePoint, which you may find useful to review: Teams meeting recording and transcript storage and permissions in OneDrive and SharePoint - Microso…

If you’ve already checked those locations and the recording still doesn’t appear, and if you have the appropriate admin access, you could consider using the built‑in diagnostic tool in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

By going to Help & Support and entering Diag: Missing Recording, then providing the meeting URL and date, the tool can help identify potential issues and guide you through possible next steps.

Should you have any updates after trying the above, or if there’s anything else you’d like to clarify, please feel free to leave a comment under this post. I’ll be happy to follow along and assist as best as I can within the scope of this forum. 

Thank you very much for your understanding, and I hope you’re able to locate the recording soon.

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Try the following steps in order, based on where Teams normally stores recordings and how they can fail to upload.

1. Check the meeting chat in Teams

• Go to Chat in Teams.
• Open the chat for that specific meeting.
• Select the Shared tab.
• Look for an .mp4 file with the Recording icon and select Play if it appears.

2. Check the meeting entry in the Teams calendar

• Go to Calendar in Teams.
• Double‑click the past meeting from last weekend.
• In the Recap or Meeting recap section, look for the recording and select Play.

3. Check the standard storage locations (OneDrive/SharePoint) Recordings are stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, depending on the meeting type:

• For non‑channel meetings: the recording is stored in the Recordings folder under My files in the recording owner’s OneDrive.
  • Example path: <Recording user's OneDrive for Business>/My files/Recordings.
• For channel meetings: the recording is stored in the team’s SharePoint site:
  • In Teams: go to the team and channel where the meeting was held → Files → Recordings → Open in SharePoint.
  • Example path: <SharePoint/Documents/Channel name>/Recordings.

4. If you still don’t see the recording in Teams There is a known issue where the recording link might not appear in a busy chat:

• In the meeting chat, scroll all the way up, then back down to the bottom to refresh the chat view and see if the recording link appears.

5. If you know recording started but can’t find the file

• Confirm you saw the “recording started” message during the meeting. If that message never appeared, the recording did not start and cannot be recovered.
• If it did start:
  • Check whether the file was deleted, moved, or expired in OneDrive/SharePoint.
  • Look in your OneDrive recycle bin and second‑stage recycle bin for the recording file. See “Restore deleted files or folders in OneDrive” in the linked article for recovery steps.

6. If the upload to OneDrive/SharePoint failed

• In the meeting chat, look for a message indicating the recording failed to upload and is stored temporarily for 21 days.
  • From that message, you can retry uploading it to OneDrive or download it to your device.
• If you instead see a message that the recording was permanently deleted from temporary storage, it cannot be recovered.

7. If you still cannot locate the recording

• As a tenant admin, run the Missing Recording Diagnostic from the Microsoft 365 admin center:
  • Use the Run Tests link described in the “Issues that affect meeting recordings” article.
  • In Run diagnostic, enter the meeting URL (from the original invite) and the date the meeting was recorded, then select Run Tests.
  • The diagnostic will confirm whether the recording finished successfully and was uploaded to OneDrive/SharePoint.
• If the diagnostic does not resolve it, open a service request with Microsoft 365 Support from the admin center so engineering can check backend logs for that meeting.

These steps cover all supported locations and known failure modes for Teams meeting recordings; if the diagnostic and support cannot find an uploaded or temporarily stored file, the recording is not recoverable.

References:

• I can't record a meeting in Microsoft Teams
• Record a meeting in Microsoft Teams
• Play, share, and download a meeting recording in Microsoft Teams
• Issues that affect meeting recordings