Summary

Teams recordings are ordinary video files stored in Microsoft 365, and where a recording lands depends entirely on what kind of meeting it was. This article shows you the four routes to any recording, how to share one with someone who was not invited, and how to stop it deleting itself.

In this guide

• 1. Open the Recording from the Meeting Chat
• 2. Open the Recording from the Calendar Event's Recap Tab
• 3. Find It in OneDrive When It Was a Scheduled or Ad Hoc Meeting
• 4. Find It in SharePoint When It Was a Channel Meeting
• 5. Search for the Recording by Name
• 6. Share the Recording with Someone Who Was Not in the Meeting
• 7. Check the Expiry Date Before the Recording Deletes Itself
• What the Expiration Banner Means and What You Can Get Back
• When the Recipient Cannot Open a Recording You Can

Before You Start

• A Microsoft Teams account with a Microsoft 365 licence.
• Someone recorded the meeting. A meeting nobody recorded leaves no file behind.
• You attended the meeting, or the person who recorded it shares the file with you.

Instructions

Two facts explain almost every "where did it go" moment:

• Recordings no longer live in Stream. Microsoft Stream classic was retired, and old Stream links no longer resolve. Every recording made today is a plain .mp4 file stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, played through the Stream player in your browser.
• The meeting type decides the location, and it is rarely the person who recorded it. A scheduled or ad hoc meeting saves to the OneDrive of the meeting organizer, in a folder named Recordings, even when somebody else started the recording and even when the organizer never turned up. A channel meeting saves to the SharePoint site behind that team, in the channel's own Recordings folder. Only a 1:1 call or a group call follows the person who selected Record.

That distinction also decides what you can do with the file. In a channel meeting, everyone on the team already has access. In every other meeting, the organizer owns the file and the invited attendees get view access.

1. Open the Recording from the Meeting Chat

The fastest route, and it works whether or not you organized the meeting.

1. Open Teams and click Chat in the left app bar.
2. Find the meeting in the chat list. Meeting chats carry the meeting title and show the date of the meeting rather than a person's name.
3. Open the chat and scroll to the end of the conversation. The recording appears as a card with a video thumbnail, the meeting name, and the length.
4. Click the card. The recording opens in the Stream player, either in the Teams window or in a browser tab, and starts playing.
5. To reach the underlying file, click the three dots (...) in the player toolbar and select Open in OneDrive or Open in SharePoint.

Note: A recording takes several minutes to upload and process after the meeting ends. If the chat shows a plain grey placeholder instead of a thumbnail, or the card is missing entirely, wait 10–15 minutes and reopen the chat.

2. Open the Recording from the Calendar Event's Recap Tab

Reach the recording from the calendar entry when the chat has scrolled out of reach.

1. Click Calendar in the left app bar.
2. Move to the day the meeting ran and double-click the event. The meeting window opens.
3. Click the Recap tab along the top of that window, beside Details and Chat. Older builds show the recording in a section on the Details tab instead.
4. The Recap tab lists the recording, the transcript, files shared during the call, and the attendance report.
5. Click the recording thumbnail to play it, or click the three dots (...) beside it and select Open in OneDrive to reach the file.

Tip: If you want one specific thing that was said rather than the whole video, open the Transcript on the same Recap tab and use the search box above it. Clicking a line in the transcript jumps the video to that moment.

3. Find It in OneDrive When It Was a Scheduled or Ad Hoc Meeting

A meeting recording lands in the OneDrive of the person who organized the meeting, whoever pressed the button.

Microsoft saves the file to the organizer's OneDrive, in a folder named Recordings, even when another attendee started the recording and even when the organizer did not attend. That covers meetings scheduled in Outlook, meetings scheduled in Teams, recurring meetings, Meet now meetings, meetings a delegate set up on someone's behalf, meetings that recorded themselves automatically, and Teams events. Calls are the exception: a 1:1 call or a group call goes to the OneDrive of whoever selected Record.

If you organized the meeting, or you recorded a 1:1 or group call:

1. Go to https://onedrive.com in a browser and sign in with your work account, or click the app launcher grid in the top-left corner of any Microsoft 365 page and choose OneDrive.
2. Click My files in the left sidebar.
3. Open the folder named Recordings.
4. Look for the meeting title. Teams names the files as the meeting title, then the date and time, then Meeting Recording — for example Weekly Project Sync-20260722_140312-Meeting Recording.mp4.
5. Click the file name. The video opens in the Stream player and plays in the browser.

If someone else organized the meeting:

1. Click Shared in the left sidebar of OneDrive, then open the Shared with you tab.
2. Look for the meeting title in the list. Everyone invited to the meeting gets view access automatically the moment the recording finishes saving.
3. Sort by the Date shared column to bring recent items to the top if the list is long.

Note: The Recordings folder exists only once a recording has been saved into your OneDrive. If it is not there, no meeting you organized has been recorded yet — that is expected, and it does not mean a recording was lost. Starting a recording in somebody else's meeting does not put a file in your OneDrive.

4. Find It in SharePoint When It Was a Channel Meeting

A meeting held in a channel stores its recording with the team's files instead.

A meeting counts as a channel meeting when it was started from the channel with Meet, or scheduled with a channel selected in the Add channel field of the invitation.

1. Click Teams in the left app bar and open the channel where the meeting was held.
2. Click the Files tab at the top of the channel. The channel's document library opens inside Teams.
3. Open the Recordings folder.
4. Click the .mp4 file to play it in the Stream player.
5. To work with the file in the browser instead, click Open in SharePoint on the Files tab toolbar — it sits under the three dots (...) if the window is narrow. The team's SharePoint document library opens in a new tab, on the same folder.

Note: Anyone who is a member of the team can open a channel recording without being invited to the meeting and without anyone sharing it. That is the practical difference between the two meeting types, and it is worth remembering when you decide where to hold a session people will want to review later.

5. Search for the Recording by Name

Track down a recording when you do not remember the meeting or who recorded it.

1. Go to https://onedrive.com and click the search box at the top of the page.
2. Type part of the meeting title, or type Meeting Recording — every Teams recording carries that phrase in its file name.
3. Press Enter. The results cover your own OneDrive, everything shared with you, and the SharePoint sites you belong to.
4. Narrow the results with the Type filter above the list and choose Video, which strips out meeting notes, transcripts, and chat files.
5. Click a result to play it.

You can also search from inside Teams:

1. Click the Search box at the top of the Teams window and type the meeting title.
2. Press Enter, then select the Files tab in the results panel.
3. Recordings appear alongside any documents shared in that meeting.

6. Share the Recording with Someone Who Was Not in the Meeting

Grant access to a colleague who was never invited, or ask the owner to do it for you.

If you own the file — you organized the meeting, you recorded a 1:1 or group call, or it is a channel recording and you are on the team:

1. Open the recording's folder in OneDrive or SharePoint using Step 3 or Step 4.
2. Hover over the file row and click the circle that appears to the left of the file name to select it.
3. Click Share in the toolbar above the file list. The Send link dialog opens.
4. Click the permission line at the top of the dialog — it reads something like People in your organization with the link can view — to open Link settings.
5. Choose who the link works for: Anyone with the link, People in your organization, People with existing access, or Specific people. Confirm the permission dropdown below reads Can view rather than Can edit, then click Apply.
6. Type the names or email addresses in the To box and click Send, or click Copy link and paste the link into a chat or email yourself.

Note: Anyone with the link only appears when your organization allows external sharing. If it is missing or greyed out, use Specific people and enter the person's email address instead — that works for guests your organization has already approved.

If the person is outside your organization:

Sharing a recording follows file permissions, not meeting membership. Everyone invited from inside your organization is given a link to the file automatically the moment the recording finishes saving. Guests and external attendees are not — Microsoft's rule is that they can view a recording only when someone sends them a direct link, and that stays true even when they sat through the whole meeting.

1. Select the recording in OneDrive or SharePoint and click Share.
2. Click the permission line at the top of the Send link dialog to open Link settings.
3. Choose Specific people. This is the setting to use for anyone outside the company: the link works only for the addresses you name, and the recipient has to prove who they are before it opens.
4. Set the permission dropdown to Can view so the recording cannot be edited or replaced, then click Apply.
5. Type the external email address in the To box and click Send. The recipient gets a mail from Microsoft with a link to the file.

Note: Two more cases where access does not arrive on its own. In a meeting with more than 250 participants, some attendees get no file permission at all and have to ask the owner for it. In a 1:1 call, the other person gets read-only access with no rights to download or re-share, so a request to forward the file has to come back to the recorder.

If you were an attendee, not the organizer:

You can watch the recording, but you cannot re-share a file you do not own. Message the meeting organizer — the recording is in their OneDrive whoever started it — and ask them to follow the steps above, either sharing it directly with your colleague or sending you a Can view link you can forward. Co-organizers have the same editing permissions as the organizer, so any of them can do it. If the organizer has left the organization, raise a ticket and tell IT: "I need a Teams meeting recording that is stored in a departed employee's OneDrive" — include the meeting title and date, and ask them to grant you access to the file.

7. Check the Expiry Date Before the Recording Deletes Itself

Recordings carry an automatic deletion date. Extend it or download a permanent copy.

Microsoft 365 stamps every new recording and transcript with an expiration date — 120 days after it was created, unless your organization set a different figure or switched expiry off. The date is fixed at the moment the file is created, so an admin raising the default later does nothing for recordings that already exist. Change the date on the file itself, or take a copy.

Changing the date needs edit permission on the file. The meeting organizer and any co-organizers have it automatically; everyone else can see the countdown but not move it.

From the video player — the fastest route:

1. Open the recording from the meeting chat or the Recap tab, using Step 1 or Step 2.
2. Look directly beneath the video for the expiration countdown, which states how long the recording has left.
3. Click the countdown. A dropdown of timeframes opens.
4. Pick a longer timeframe, or choose Remove expiration to stop the file deleting itself at all. The line under the video updates to the new date, or disappears once you remove the expiry.

From OneDrive or SharePoint:

1. Open the recording's folder in OneDrive or SharePoint.
2. Hover over the file row and click the circle to the left of the file name to select it.
3. Click the Details icon — a letter i inside a circle — at the top-right of the page. The details pane opens down the right-hand side.
4. Scroll the pane until you find the Expiration date line. It shows the exact date the file is moved to the recycle bin.
5. Click that date to open the expiration settings, then either pick a later date or select the option to remove the expiration entirely, and click Save.
6. To keep a copy regardless, select the file and click Download in the toolbar. The .mp4 file saves to your Downloads folder and is yours permanently — expiry applies to the copy in Microsoft 365, never to the one on your own machine.

Verification: Reopen the Details pane. The Expiration date line now shows the new date, or has disappeared from the pane if you removed the expiration.

Troubleshooting

DANGER

Meeting recordings delete themselves. Microsoft 365 applies a default expiry of 120 days to every Teams recording, and your organization can set a different window. Once the date passes the file moves to the recycle bin, and the owner has up to 90 days to pull it back before it is purged for good. Download anything you need to keep — Step 7 shows you how.

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
No recording card anywhere in the meeting chat	Nobody started a recording	Open the event's Recap tab (Step 2). If it lists no recording, the meeting was never recorded and no file exists.
Card shows a grey placeholder and will not play	Still uploading and processing	Recordings take several minutes to process after the meeting ends. Wait 10–15 minutes and reopen the chat.
A "Request access" page opens instead of the video	You were not an invited attendee	Click Request access on that page and name the meeting in the message box. The file's owner approves it from their email.
Your client or guest cannot open the link you sent	External guests get no access automatically	Recordings follow file permissions, not the invite list. See When the Recipient Cannot Open a Recording You Can.
A banner says the recording is unavailable	It expired and went to the recycle bin	See What the Expiration Banner Means and What You Can Get Back.
You started the recording and it is not in your OneDrive	The meeting was organized by somebody else, or it was a channel meeting	A scheduled or ad hoc meeting saves to the organizer's OneDrive, not yours. Look in Shared with you (Step 3) or ask the organizer. If the meeting was held in a channel, follow Step 4 instead.
An old link points at Microsoft Stream and fails	Stream classic was retired	The file moved to OneDrive or SharePoint. Search for the meeting title in OneDrive (Step 5) rather than following the old link.
The recording has vanished completely	Expiration date passed	Open Recycle bin in the left sidebar of OneDrive or the SharePoint site and restore the file, then remove the expiration (Step 7).

What the Expiration Banner Means and What You Can Get Back

The countdown under a recording is not a warning that someone is about to tidy up. It is a deletion date Microsoft 365 stamped on the file the moment it was created, and it runs whether or not anyone is watching.

What the numbers actually are:

• The default is 120 days from creation. Your organization can set a different figure, from a single day upward, or switch automatic expiry off entirely.
• The date belongs to the file, not to the policy. If an admin raises the default next month, recordings made before that keep the date they were given.
• Expiry applies to transcripts on the same terms as recordings.

What happens on the day it expires:

The file is moved to the recycle bin of wherever it was stored — the organizer's OneDrive for a scheduled or ad hoc meeting, the OneDrive of whoever recorded a 1:1 or group call, the team's SharePoint site for a channel meeting. It is not destroyed at that moment. Anyone opening the meeting recap sees a message along the lines of The recording is currently unavailable. Please check with organizer whether it's still being uploaded, has expired, or has been deleted.

The owner receives an email when the recording expires, and from that point has up to 90 days to restore it.

To get it back — the owner, or anyone with edit permission:

1. For a normal meeting, go to https://onedrive.com and click Recycle bin in the left navigation. For a channel meeting, open the channel's Files tab, click Open in SharePoint, and click Recycle bin in the left navigation of the site.
2. Point at the recording and click the circle that appears to select it.
3. Click Restore. The file returns to the exact folder it was deleted from, with the same permissions it had before — restoring takes nothing away from anyone.
4. Nothing further is needed. A recording restored from the recycle bin no longer expires automatically — the countdown under the video is gone, and the Expiration date line has disappeared from the OneDrive details pane. Download a copy anyway if the recording matters (Step 7).

What cannot be recovered:

Once the recording is purged from the recycle bin it is gone. There is no deeper copy for a support agent to reach into, and no ticket brings it back — this is the one part of the process nobody can undo for you. If it has already passed that point, ask the people who attended whether anyone downloaded a copy, and set Remove expiration on the recordings you still have.

One route is worth trying first for a channel recording that is missing from the site's recycle bin, because a site administrator can see a second-stage bin that you cannot. Raise a ticket and send them: "A Teams channel meeting recording has been deleted from the SharePoint site recycle bin. Please check whether it can still be restored from the site collection recycle bin." Include the team and channel name, the meeting title, and the date of the meeting.

When the Recipient Cannot Open a Recording You Can

A recording is an ordinary video file in OneDrive or SharePoint, so who can open it is decided by file permissions — not by who was in the meeting. That single fact explains almost every version of "it works for me".

Who gets access without anyone doing anything:

• Invited colleagues inside your organization. Everyone on the invite is given a link to the file as soon as the recording finishes saving.
• Team members, for a channel meeting. Permissions come from the channel, so anyone on the team can open it whether or not they attended.
• Nobody outside your organization. Guests and external attendees can view a recording only when someone sends them a direct link to the file. Sitting in the meeting grants them nothing.

What the external recipient sees when it fails:

They land on a Microsoft sign-in page, and after signing in with their own account they get a page telling them they do not have access, with a Request access button. Clicking it emails the file's owner, not you — so if the organizer owns the file and you forwarded the link, the request goes to them and you never hear about it. Some external recipients see the sign-in page loop instead of an access-request page, which is the same problem wearing a different coat: the link they were given is not one their account is allowed to open.

The fix, done by whoever owns the file:

Share it explicitly with Specific people and their exact email address, using Step 6. A link created that way is tied to the address you type, so the recipient signs in once and the video plays.

If Specific people refuses an outside address:

External sharing is switched off for your organization or for that site, and no amount of re-sending changes it. Raise a ticket and send them: "I need to share a Teams meeting recording stored in OneDrive with an external client. Please enable external sharing for my account, or share this file on my behalf." Include the meeting title, the date, and the client's email address.

Where the recording contains nothing confidential and the wait is not worth it, download the .mp4 with Step 7 and send the file itself — a downloaded copy carries no expiry and no permissions. Check your organization's rules on sending recordings outside the company before you do.

Related Articles

• How to Record a Teams Meeting
• Understanding Where Your Files Live — OneDrive vs. SharePoint vs. Teams
• How to Find Past Chats and Meetings in Teams
• Understanding Teams Meetings — Features, Roles, and Best Practices
• How to Share Your Screen in a Teams Meeting
• How to Schedule a Teams Meeting

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