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Live transcription in Teams meetings

Find out how to make your meetings more productive and inclusive with Teams live transcription.

What is Teams Live Transcription

Live transcription is a written record of the spoken text that occurs during a scheduled Teams meeting. The text appears alongside the meeting video or audio in real-time, including the speaker's name (unless they have chosen to hide it) and a timestamp.

How it can benefit you and meeting participants

  • Save time and focus on what is being said rather than typing notes
  • Save money by avoiding having to pay external transcription companies
  • Inclusive for participants who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, or have different levels of language proficiency
  • Participants in noisy places will appreciate the visual aid
  • A record of who said what and when
  • Easily accessible to everyone in the meeting
  • Ability to download the transcript as a file after the meeting (as a Word or image file)

How to use it

Find out how to start, stop, download, and edit your transcripts by visiting the University of Bath - Learning Pathways site.

Things to consider

Transcriptions are currently only available:

  • For scheduled meetings (not Channel, or Meet now meetings - available from July 2021)
  • When the spoken language is English
  • On the installed desktop version of Teams

Meeting recording and transcription features are separate. You need to start each feature separately and will have a separate meeting recordings and transcript file after the meeting. Learn more about meeting recordings in Teams.

Automate your note-taking in meetings

Keeping detailed notes for your meetings is now easier with automated speech to text transcription capability.

Data and privacy considerations

  • Participants are notified when live transcription is switched on and can hide it from their meeting view
  • You can choose to hide your identity in meeting captions and transcripts but this needs to be done before the meeting
  • The transcript can be accessed via the meeting chat and the 'Recording and Transcripts' tab (double-click the meeting in your Teams calendar) until a meeting organiser deletes the transcript
  • All meeting participants can download a copy of and edit the transcript

Find out more about Teams Live Transcriptions

University of Bath - Learning pathways Further features will be enabled in July, check back then!