Teams Meetings: Automatic Closed Captioning and Transcription Details

Summary

During any Teams meeting, you can start a live transcription of the proceedings. The text appears alongside the meeting video or audio in real-time, including the speaker's name (unless they chose to hide it) and a time stamp. This article will review information about transcription and closed captioning in Microsoft Teams. 

 

Who can start, stop, view, and download a transcript?

Type of meeting participant

Start and stop transcription

View real-time transcription

View transcript after meeting

Download transcript after meeting

Organizer

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Person from same tenant*

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Person from another tenant

No

Yes

No

No

Anonymous

No

No

No

No

* Your tenant is all the people who share common access to Teams, as defined by your IT admin.

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Best Practices for Using Auto Transcription

Consider using an external high-quality microphone, it will clear up the quality of your audio for the live transcription

Listen to the room you are in and consider turning down/off anything that makes a considerable amount of background noise

If there are any loud disruptions (i.e. fire truck driving by) pause and hold your thoughts until that noise passes

Speak slowly, it will help the system capture the words you are saying

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Enabling and Disabling Auto-Transcription

Live transcription can make your meeting more productive and inclusive for participants who are deaf or hard-of-hearing or have different levels of language proficiency. Participants in noisy places will also appreciate the visual aid.

People can choose to not be identified in meeting transcripts. For details, see Microsoft Support - Hide your identity in meeting captions and transcripts in Microsoft Teams 

Task: Enable or disable the auto-transcription

Instructions

Step 1 - Go to the meeting controls and select More Actions 

Step 2 - Choose Record and Transcribe, and select  Start transcription button Start Transcription.

Start transcription menus

 

Tip: If you also want to record the meeting , select More options again and choose Start recording.

All participants see a notification that the meeting is being transcribed. The transcript appears on the right side of your screen.

 

Outcome

You will be able to enable (or disable) the auto-transcription.

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Change the Transcript Language

The transcript language must be the same as the language being spoken in the meeting.

Task: Change the language setting

Instructions

Step 1 - You'll see the live transcription on the right side of your screen. At the top right of the transcript window, select Transcript settings 

Change transcript language screen

 

Step 2 - Hover over Spoken language. and choose another language everyone in the meeting is speaking.

Step 3 - Select Confirm. The transcript will now be displayed in this language.

Important: When you change the spoken language setting, it affects everyone. The transcript language (as well as that of the captions) will change for all meeting participants.

 

NOTE: You have up to 34 different language options for transcription:

English (US), English (Canada), English (India), English (UK), English (Australia), English (New Zealand), Arabic (Arab Emirates) , Arabic (Saudi Arabia) , Chinese (Simplified China), Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong SAR), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan) , Czech (Czechia) , Danish (Denmark), Dutch (Belgium) , Dutch (Netherlands), French (Canada), French (France), Finnish (Finland) , German (Germany), Greek (Greece) , Hebrew (Israel) , Hindi (India), Hungarian (Hungary) , Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea) , Norwegian (Norway), Polish (Poland) , Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal) , Romanian (Romania) , Russian (Russia) , Slovak (Slovakia) , Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish (Sweden), Thai (Thailand) , Turkish (Turkey) , Ukrainian (Ukraine) , Vietnamese (Vietnam)

 

Outcome

You will be able to change the language of the transcript.

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Hide or Show Live Transcription

Task: Hide or Show Live Transcription

Instructions

Step 1 - Go to the meeting controls and select More actions 

Step 2 - Select Record and transcribe, and choose Start transcription button Hide transcript or  Start transcription button Transcript.

NOTE: Obscenities are obscured by asterisks.

 

Outcome

You will be able to hide (or show) the Live Transcription.

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Download the Transcript

When the meeting is over, the transcript is immediately available in the meeting event on the calendar. Meeting participants can download it as a .docx or .vtt file.

Task: Download the Transcript

Instructions

Step 1 - Select Chat on the left in Teams.

Step 2 - Open the meeting chat and select the transcript.

Step 3 - Above the transcript, select the down arrow next to Download Teams download arrow icon and then choose the file type you want.

Tip: After the meeting, along with the transcript, any other available meeting-related items (attached docs, meeting notes, the recording) will also be available from the Details tab when you open the meeting event.

 

Outcome

You will be able to download the meeting transcript

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Share the Transcript with Mobile Participants

Uploading the transcript to chat makes it available to meeting participants who joined from a mobile device.

Task: Share Transcript with Mobile Participants

Instructions

Step 1 - Download the transcript to your computer.

Step 2 - In the meeting chat, select Attach beneath the compose box and then upload the transcript.

 

Outcome

You will be able to share the transcript with mobile participants.

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Delete the Transcript

The meeting organizer can delete the transcript.

Task: Delete the meeting Transcript

Instructions

Step 1 - Open the meeting and go to Recordings & Transcripts.

Step 2 - Select Delete above the transcript to delete the transcript.

 

Outcome

You will be able to delete the meeting transcript

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Stop and Restart Live Transcription

The meeting organizer and presenters can stop and restart transcription during the meeting. (For info about organizer and presenter roles, see Roles in a Teams meeting .)

Task: Stop and restart Live Transcription

Instructions

Step 1 - Go to the meeting controls and select More Actions 

Step 2 - Select Record and Transcribe and choose Stop transcription or Stop recording (if a recording is in progress).

The transcription stops automatically when all participants leave the meeting.

 

Outcome

You will be able to stop and restart the live transcription

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Closed Captions

If you're looking for information on Closed Captions our Enabling Real Time Captions article has information. 

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Further Readings 

Teams Meetings: Enabling Real-Time Captions

Microsoft Support - Record a meeting in Microsoft Teams 

Microsoft Support - View live transcription in Microsoft Teams meetings 

Microsoft Support - Hide your identity in meeting captions and transcripts in Microsoft Teams 

 

Need additional help?

For assistance concerning site creation, content sharing, file synchronization, or other common SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, or Office app activities, we recommend our Microsoft 365 Learning sites:

Learn more about the great tools our Microsoft 365 Learning sites offer!

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