Even though I am organiser of the Teams Meeting, I cannot find the recording in my Onedrive and am not a "member" of the Meeting chat

Question

I am currently on the Microsoft 365 Individual premium plan.

I was organiser for a Teams meeting with around 15 persons, including 7 invitees.

During the meeting, I started the recording and successfully pressed the button to "stop" the recording.

I noticed during the meeting that I could not send messages because I was not a "member" of the meeting chat. It appears other attendees were also not able to access the chat

After stopping the recording, I thus did not have access to any link to download from the chat, and the recording never showed up in my Onedrive. I also did not receive an email about it. It just seems to have disappeared into thin air and I have been unable to locate it for around 8 hours. I urgently need to locate the recording for downloading.

Answer 1

Hello Jiwon Heo,
This situation is typically caused by normal Microsoft Teams behavior rather than a lost recording. In non-channel meetings—such as those created via calendar invites or involving external participants—the meeting chat may not be accessible to everyone, including the organizer, which means the recording link may not appear in chat even though the recording is still saved in the backend. Processing delays can also be longer than expected, especially for larger meetings with screen sharing or longer durations, sometimes taking several hours to appear. For non-channel meetings, the recording is saved to the OneDrive of the person who started the recording (not necessarily the organizer), inside the Recordings folder.
The best course of action is to check OneDrive directly, review the Teams calendar event (not just chat), ask another attendee to check their OneDrive, and try accessing Teams via the web in case of client caching issues. Email notifications are not guaranteed, and if the recording does not appear within 12–24 hours, escalation may be appropriate—but in most cases, the recording eventually surfaces or is found in another participant’s OneDrive.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/play-share-and-download-a-meeting-recording-in-microsoft-teams-7d7e5dc5-9ae4-4b94-8589-27496037e8fa

Answer 2

I don't have much experience with call recording in Teams Personal account because this feature is new and requires a paid Microsoft 365 subscription.

If recording was successful and saved to the Cloud, then the available option is to export your chat and file history from the Cloud.

https://teams.live.com/dataexport

After extracting the downloaded .tar file, recording, (if available), should be saved in the \media folder as a .mp4 file.

Answer 3

If you are signed in to Teams with Microsoft 365 Personal, Microsoft 365 Family or Microsoft 365 Premium subscription, then call recording is available, but recordings are saved to Cloud, not to OneDrive.

https://insider.teams.com/blog/meeting-recording-in-microsoft-teams/

Recordings should be available for download from Cloud for 30 days, and then deleted.

A link to watch and download recording file should be available in the meeting chat window.

If the chat was not available when on the call, then this might have been due to that some of the meeting participants were from external organisations, and their privacy policy prevented chat and/or call recording.

Answer 4

Based on the described behavior, the recording most likely did not complete correctly or was never saved to OneDrive/SharePoint, which is why it does not appear in OneDrive or in the meeting chat.

Key points from how Teams recordings work:

1. Where the recording should be
   • For non-channel meetings, the recording is stored in the organizer’s OneDrive in a Recordings folder under My files.
   • The recording should also appear in the meeting chat once processing is complete.

   “For non-channel meetings, the recording is stored in the Recordings folder under My files.”

   If it is not in that OneDrive location and not in the chat, it indicates an issue with the recording or upload.
2. What to check when a recording is missing The official guidance for missing recordings is:
   • Confirm there was a message in the meeting indicating that recording started. If there was no “recording started” system message, the recording never actually started and cannot be recovered.
   • If the recording was started but is not in OneDrive, check whether it was deleted, moved, or expired (including the recycle bin and second-stage recycle bin in OneDrive).
   • If the recording failed to upload to OneDrive, a special message (recording “chiclet”) appears in the meeting chat. In that case, the recording is stored in temporary storage for 21 days and can be either re-uploaded to OneDrive or downloaded locally from that chat message.
   • If the chat shows a message indicating the recording was permanently deleted from temporary storage, it cannot be recovered.

   “If you know the recording was started but can’t find it in OneDrive, check if it was deleted, moved to a different location, or expired. Look in your recycle bin and second stage recycle bin.” “If you can’t find your recording in OneDrive but see this recording chiclet in your chat history, your recording failed to upload to OneDrive and will be stored in a temporary storage for 21 days. You can retry uploading it to OneDrive or download it to your local device.” “If you see this chiclet in your chat history, the recording was permanently deleted from the temporary storage and can’t be recovered.”

3. Impact of not being a “member” of the meeting chat
   • The recording link and any temporary-storage “chiclet” are surfaced in the meeting chat. If the organizer is not a member of that chat (or cannot access it), the organizer cannot see or use those links.
   • However, the actual file storage location for a non-channel meeting is still the organizer’s OneDrive Recordings folder. If the file is not present there, the recording either failed or was deleted/expired.
4. Practical recovery steps Given the situation:
   1. In OneDrive for work or school, open My files → Recordings and verify whether the .mp4 file exists.
   2. If not present, check Recycle bin and then Second-stage recycle bin in OneDrive.
   3. Ask one of the attendees who can see the meeting chat to:
      • Scroll through the chat and look for the recording message or recording chiclet.
      • If a chiclet is present (indicating temporary storage), have them download the recording locally or retry upload to OneDrive.
   4. If no “recording started” message ever appeared in the meeting chat, or if the chat shows that the recording was permanently deleted from temporary storage, the recording cannot be recovered.

Because the recording is not in OneDrive, no email was received and no download link is available. Recovery is only possible if the recording exists either in the OneDrive Recordings folder (or its recycle bins) or as a temporary-storage chiclet in the meeting chat that another participant can access.

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References:

• Issues that affect meeting recordings
• Record a meeting in Microsoft Teams
• I can't record a meeting in Microsoft Teams
• I can't transcribe a meeting in Microsoft Teams
• Manage Teams recording policies for meetings and events
• Teams meeting recording and transcript storage and permissions in OneDrive and SharePoint