Summary

Taking notes while trying to participate in a meeting is exhausting. If your company uses Microsoft 365 Copilot, you can have AI listen to the meeting, write the notes, and generate a list of action items for everyone who attended.

Before You Start

• A Microsoft 365 Copilot license
• The meeting must be held in Microsoft Teams
• Transcription must be turned on during the meeting

Instructions

1. Turn on Transcription During the Meeting

Copilot relies entirely on the meeting transcript. If the transcript is off, Copilot is blind and deaf to what happened.

1. Once you join the Teams meeting, click More (the three dots) in the top menu bar.
2. Select Record and transcribe > Start transcription.
3. A notification will appear for all participants stating that transcription has started.
4. Optional: You can also select Start recording if you want the video as well, but recording is not strictly required for Copilot — only transcription is.

INFO

If Start transcription is missing, one of three things is true: your organization has turned transcription off by policy, you are in a meeting hosted by another organization, or the organizer set Copilot to Off in Meeting options — that single setting also blocks recording and transcription for everyone in the meeting. The cause table at the end of this guide tells them apart and gives you the words to send.

2. Use Copilot During the Meeting

You don't have to wait for the meeting to end. You can ask Copilot to catch you up or track tasks live.

1. Click the Copilot icon in the top menu bar of the Teams meeting.
2. The Copilot pane opens on the right side. Only you can see what you type here.
3. Try these prompts while the meeting is happening:
   • Summarize the meeting so far (great if you joined 10 minutes late)
   • What action items have been assigned?
   • List the pros and cons of the marketing strategy we discussed
   • What questions remain unresolved?

3. Generate Official Notes After the Meeting

Once the meeting ends, use Copilot to generate the final notes you can email to the team.

1. Open Teams and go to the Chat tab.
2. Find the chat thread for the meeting you had.
3. Click the Recap tab at the top.
4. Teams automatically provides a summary, but for formal notes, click the Copilot tab next to it.
5. Type this prompt: Write a professional meeting recap. Include a brief executive summary, the main discussion points with bullet points, and a table of action items showing the task and the person assigned.
6. Press Enter.
7. Copilot will generate the notes based on the transcript.
8. Click the Copy icon at the bottom of Copilot's response to paste it into an email or Word document.

4. Fix Mistakes (The Human Review)

Copilot is highly accurate, but it struggles with people talking over each other or thick accents.

1. Always read the notes before sending them.
2. Check that the action items are assigned to the right people. "Someone needs to fix the server" might get assigned to the person who spoke the sentence, rather than the IT person on the call.
3. Check industry acronyms — Copilot might misspell technical terms unique to your company.

Troubleshooting

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
"Copilot cannot be used right now"	Transcription is off	Start transcription from the More menu during the meeting
Notes are missing the first 10 minutes	Transcription started late	Copilot only knows what happened after transcription was turned on
Action items are assigned to the wrong people	AI misinterpretation	Manually correct the names before sending the notes
Copilot is grayed out in the meeting	Several possible causes	Work through the cause table below — transcription is the culprit far more often than licensing

Copilot Grayed Out or Missing in a Meeting

Copilot in a Teams meeting has more off-switches than most people expect, and they are not equally likely. Start at the top of this table: transcription is the cause far more often than licensing is.

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
The Copilot button is visible but does nothing, and nobody has started a transcript	Transcription never started	Start it yourself from More > Record and transcribe > Start transcription. Under Microsoft's default meeting policy the organizer's Copilot option is During and after the meeting, which keeps Copilot inert until a transcript is running.
Copilot answered during the call, then vanished from the Recap tab	The meeting ran without transcription or recording	Expected behaviour. Copilot is not available in a meeting's Recap tab unless transcription or recording was on during the meeting. Some organizations allow a during-the-meeting-only mode that works from temporary speech-to-text, and nothing from it survives the call. Start transcription at the top of the next one.
No Copilot button anywhere in the meeting toolbar	No Microsoft 365 Copilot license on your account	Read your license label — How to Use Microsoft 365 Copilot Basics step 2 shows you where. Copilot Chat (Basic) means no add-on license. Raise a ticket: "Please confirm whether a Microsoft 365 Copilot license is assigned to my account. The Copilot button does not appear in Teams meetings."
Copilot is unavailable in one meeting but works in your own	The meeting is hosted by another organization	Copilot does not work for you in a meeting hosted outside your own organization, whatever license you hold, and it cannot reach that meeting's transcript afterwards. Ask the host: "Could you share the meeting notes or recording afterwards? Copilot is not available to me in meetings hosted from your organization."
Copilot, recording and transcription are all missing for everyone	The organizer set Copilot to Off in Meeting options	That one setting turns off recording and transcription for the meeting as well. Ask the organizer: "Could you change Copilot to 'During and after the meeting' in Meeting options for this series? It is currently set to Off, which is also blocking transcription for everyone."
Copilot is missing in every meeting, including ones you organize	Copilot or transcription turned off across your organization	This is set centrally and no setting on your machine overrides it. Raise a ticket: "Copilot does not appear in any Teams meeting for me, including meetings I organize myself. Please check the Copilot and transcription settings on the Teams meeting policy assigned to my account."
Copilot is unavailable in a meeting marked as encrypted	End-to-end encryption is on for that meeting	Copilot is not available in end-to-end encrypted meetings, by design. Take notes by hand for that one, or ask the organizer whether the next meeting needs end-to-end encryption: "Copilot cannot run in end-to-end encrypted meetings. Is end-to-end encryption required for this series, or can we turn it off so the meeting can be transcribed?"

Related Articles

• How to Use Microsoft 365 Copilot Basics
• How to Use Copilot to Summarize Emails, Documents, and Meetings
• How to Write Effective AI Prompts for Office Work
• Understanding AI-Generated Content at Work — What You Can and Can't Trust

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