Desktop
On the right side of your screen, you will find a button that will allow you to start a live transcription of any Teams meeting that you wish to watch. There is also a text overlay that appears along with the video or audio of the meeting in real time, which includes the name of the speaker (unless they chose to hide it) and the time when the meeting was conducted. 
Overview
A live transcription service can be a huge help if you have participants in your meeting who are deaf or hard of hearing, or if they speak in a different language than the rest of the group, or even if they may not understand the language, which makes your meeting more productive and includes more participants. This visual aid will also be appreciated by participants who are in noisy environments.
Transcripts of meetings can be made anonymous if the people involved wish to remain anonymous. To find out more about protecting your identity while using meeting captions and transcripts, please refer to the following article.
Limitations
Live transcription is available:
- It can be accessed from Teams’ desktop version.
- For our customers, we offer the following licenses: Office 365 E1, Office 365 A1, Office 365/Microsoft 365 A3, Office 365/Microsoft 365 A5, Office 365 E3, Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 F1, Microsoft 365/Microsoft 365 F3, Microsoft 365 /Microsoft 365 F3, Microsoft 365/Microsoft 365 F3, Microsoft 365/Microsoft 365 F3, Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, and Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
Live transcription isn’t available:
- In the GCC-High environment as well as the DoD environment.
Important: You should ensure that the IT admin in your organization turns on the Allow transcription policy for Teams meetings in the Teams meeting policy so that users will have the option to start transcripts in every meeting if your organization uses OneDrive for Business and SharePoint. Captions will now be available in the video recording of the meeting after the meeting has been recorded.
Note: This feature has not been enabled for you by your IT admin if you do not see transcription options, for example.
After the meeting, the saved transcript is available for reference and download in Teams on the desktop and web.
Note: Those attending meetings via the phone number that is provided in the meeting details by calling in will not be able to see transcripts of the meeting.
Start live transcription
- Select More actions from the meeting controls menu when you are in the meeting.
- Select the option to start the transcription.
[su_note note_color=”#ffddf1″] Tip: If you want to record your meeting at the same time, then you will need to click on the More options option again and select Start recording.[/su_note]
We would like to inform all participants that as a result of this, a transcript of the meeting will be sent to them within a few days. A transcript of the conversation can be viewed on the right side of your screen on the left side of the screen.
Change the transcript language
This must be the same language that is being used in the meeting, which is to be translated into the transcript. In order to change your language settings, please follow the steps below:
- Your screen will display a live transcription of the interview on the right side of it. On the transcript window, at the top right corner, there is a setting called Transcript settings that you can change.
- Select the option to change the language of the spoken message.
- As soon as you log in to the meeting, you will be prompted to select the language in which everyone will be speaking. When you have selected the appropriate language, click Confirm to confirm your selection. There will now be an option to display the transcript in this language.
[su_note note_color=”#ffddf1″] Important: The spoken language setting affects everyone when you change it, so make sure you keep that in mind. There will be a change in the language of the transcript (as well as the captions) for all meeting participants.[/su_note]
The transcription tool will allow you to choose between 34 different languages to be used:
English (US), English (Canada), English (India), English (UK), English (Australia), English (New Zealand), Arabic (Arab Emirates) (Preview), Arabic (Saudi Arabia) (Preview), Chinese (Simplified China), Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong SAR), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan) (Preview), Czech (Czechia) (Preview), Danish (Denmark), Dutch (Belgium) (Preview), Dutch (Netherlands), French (Canada), French (France), Finnish (Finland) (Preview), German (Germany), Greek (Greece) (Preview), Hebrew (Israel) (Preview), Hindi (India), Hungarian (Hungary) (Preview), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea) (Preview), Norwegian (Norway), Polish (Poland) (Preview), Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal) (Preview), Romanian (Romania) (Preview), Russian (Russia) (Preview), Slovak (Slovakia) (Preview), Spanish (Mexico), Spanish (Spain), Swedish (Sweden), Thai (Thailand) (Preview), Turkish (Turkey) (Preview), Ukrainian (Ukraine) (Preview), Vietnamese (Vietnam) (Preview)
Hide or show live transcription
- The meeting controls can be found by selecting More actions from the meeting controls menu.
- It is possible to hide or show the transcript depending on your preference.
[su_note note_color=”#ffddf1″] Note: Words that contain obscenities are marked with asterisks.[/su_note]
Stop live transcription
In the course of the meeting, the organizer and presenter may stop and restart the transcription at any time. It is recommended that you view Roles in a Teams Meeting for more information about the roles of the organizer and presenter.
- At the top of the meeting screen, you will find a control called More actions that can be found in the meeting controls section.
- If a recording is in progress or a transcription is being carried out, choose Stop transcription or Stop recording.
When all participants of the meeting leave the room, the transcription stops automatically.
Download the transcript
There is a really important thing to note about the transcript of your meeting. It will be available shortly after the meeting has been concluded on the calendar event that was created for that meeting. A .docx or a .vtt file can be downloaded by the meeting participants as a .docx or .vtt file.
- The Calendar option can be found on the left side of Teams.
- Select the transcript from the meeting event by opening the meeting event in a new window.
- Choose the Download icon to the left of the transcript, choose the file type that you wish to download and then click Next.
Tip: There will also be a link to the recording and the attached documents when you open the meeting event in the Details tab. Additionally, you can get access to other meeting-related information (attached documents, meeting notes, broadcast) when you open the meeting event in the Details tab.
Share the transcript with mobile participants
This allows meeting participants whose mobile devices have been used to join the meeting to be able to view the transcript that was uploaded to chat.
- The transcript can be downloaded to your computer by clicking here.
- Click on Attach underneath the compose box in the meeting chat, and then upload the transcript in the dialogue box that appears.
Delete the transcript
An organizer of a meeting has the option of deleting the transcript.
- Go to the Recordings & Transcripts tab on the meeting page after the meeting has been opened.
- You can delete the transcript by selecting the Delete button.
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 |
You can think of your tenant as the entire group of people who access Teams at the same time, as defined by your IT admin.
[su_note note_color=”#ffddf1″]
Notes:
- In the Exchange Online account of the meeting organizer, a copy of the live transcript of the meeting will be stored. In Teams, you are able to view the transcript of the meeting by either going into the chat box and looking into the discussion or by going to the Recordings & Transcripts tab until the meeting organizer deletes the transcript.
- Meeting Transcription will not be able to create legal holds, retention policies, or eDiscovery clauses in its initial release, which means that there will not be any ability to apply retention policies to the transcriptions. Due to this, the life cycle of the meeting transcript is dependent on the meeting organizers managing it manually as a result of this.
- Those of you who are looking to join Teams meetings via Cloud Video Interop (CVI) will need to contact your CVI provider to make sure that the transcription notification goes out to their CVI participant when transcription begins.
[/su_note]
[su_note note_color=”#ffddf1″] Important: In order to limit excessive use and/or fraud, Microsoft is permitted to restrict the number of minutes of transcription and translation services with reasonable notice as a means of limiting excessive use and/or fraud, along with ensuring service performance in the future. As part of Office 365, there are a wide variety of services and apps available to you, including Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, Stream, and many more, that include functions such as live captioning, subtitles, and transcripts.[/su_note]
Mobile
Access the transcript
- The chat history for the meeting can be found by going to the meeting page.
- On the screen, go to the top and tap More.
- Click on the Files tab.
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