Microsoft explains simple fix for one of the most "frustrating" Teams issues

Teams has "frustrating" issue of "missing" recordings, but expired files remain recoverable if you know where to look.

Earlier today Teams faced a big outage as it experienced a notable slowdown in performance. Thankfully Microsoft says that's fixed now but the tech giant has acknowledged a major inconvenience users and admins alike have to face. The company says that there are "few support issues more frustrating" than a Teams meeting recording going missing.

In a new blog post about the issue, Microsoft has explained what's going on and how to fix it, and fortunately, it seems like the problem has a somewhat easy fix as long as you understand what's happening.

For those not familiar, Microsoft Teams recordings are an essential feature as they automatically capture meeting audio, video, and screen sharing so users can replay or share that information later for various purposes. Aside from that, transcriptions are available too and they work on a similar principle, by converting spoken dialogue into searchable written text, making discussions easier to review, reference, and share. Administrators can control the recording and transcription settings through Teams policies, including configurations for permissions, storage, expiration, and compliance.

Interestingly, the recordings and transcripts are actually not kept within the Teams app itself as they are typically stored in OneDrive or SharePoint and can support features like captions, intelligent recap, and Microsoft 365 Copilot integration. Here's what's kept:

• Automatically recorded meetings

• Delegate-created meetings

• Manually recorded meetings

• Meet now meetings

• Meetings scheduled in Outlook

• Meetings scheduled in the Teams client

• Recurring meetings

• Town halls

• Webinars

   

This was what actually causes the "issue" of Teams meetings going missing; as OneDrive and SharePoint monitor the expiration setting for recordings and transcripts and move them to the recycle bin when the expiration date is reached. Hence, the meeting recording is not actually deleted; it's still there and can be recovered or restored.

There is a policy setting inside the Teams admin center called " Recordings and transcripts automatically expire" which can be toggled either on or off. In case a meeting recording or transcript is sent to the Recycle Bin after it "expires", users get a 93-day window within which they can recover that data from the Bin.

You can check out the official blog post here on Microsoft's Tech Community website.

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Posted Tuesday 19 May 2026 at 5:04 pm AEST (my time).

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