Where Are Microsoft Teams Meeting Recordings Stored? A Guide for SMB Admins

Why this matters for SMB admins

When someone in your organization records a Teams meeting, the recording doesn’t just live “in Teams.” It’s actually stored as a file in either OneDrive for work or school or SharePoint, depending on the type of meeting. That distinction matters for small business admins because it directly affects storage consumption, who can access a recording, how long it stays available, and what happens if the person who created it leaves the company.

This article walks through exactly where Teams meeting recordings are stored based on Microsoft’s official documentation, along with practical considerations for planning storage and permissions.

Where meeting and event recordings are stored

Standard meetings and events

For regular meetings and Teams events, the recording is saved to the organizer’s OneDrive, specifically in a folder named Recordings. This happens even if the organizer wasn’t actually present when the meeting was recorded. Co-organizers get the same editing permissions as the organizer for that recording file.

This storage behavior applies to a wide range of meeting types, including automatically recorded meetings, meetings started with “Meet now,” meetings scheduled in Outlook or the Teams client, recurring meetings, and Teams events.

If an organizer has appointed a delegate to manage meetings on their behalf, recordings from delegate-created meetings still save to the organizer’s OneDrive Recordings folder. Delegates added as co-organizers get the same editing rights as the organizer.

1:1 calls and group calls

For 1:1 calls and group calls, the recording isn’t tied to a meeting organizer in the same way — it goes to the OneDrive account of whoever selected Record during the call.

Channel meetings

Channel meetings work differently. Instead of OneDrive, recordings for channel meetings are stored in the SharePoint site associated with that team, inside a Recordings folder under the Documents library (for example, Team name – Channel name/Documents/Recordings). This means access to a channel meeting recording is controlled by SharePoint permissions for that channel, not by OneDrive sharing.

Shared mailbox scheduled meetings

When a meeting is scheduled using a shared mailbox, the shared mailbox is treated as the organizer. If that shared mailbox actually has a OneDrive account, the recording goes there. However, since shared mailboxes typically don’t have OneDrive provisioned, the recording instead falls back to the co-organizer’s or recording initiator’s OneDrive.

One licensing detail worth noting: if a shared mailbox doesn’t have a Teams license, it inherits the meeting policy of the global identity. If your organization has disabled cloud recording in that global policy, meetings organized through an unlicensed shared mailbox won’t be recordable. To apply a custom recording policy to a shared mailbox, it needs its own Teams license.

Microsoft Teams Rooms meetings

When someone starts a meeting using “Meet now” directly from a Teams Room device, the room itself becomes the meeting organizer. By default, the recording is stored in the Teams Room’s OneDrive account, if the room has one — but in that case, meeting participants don’t get full permissions to the recording.

Microsoft notes that if you want participants to have full permissions to the recording file, you should avoid assigning a OneDrive license to the Teams Room’s resource account. In that scenario, the recording instead saves to the co-organizer’s or recording initiator’s OneDrive following the same fallback logic used elsewhere.

What happens when the organizer has no OneDrive account

Not every organizer has an active OneDrive account (for example, if their license doesn’t include OneDrive, or provisioning hasn’t completed). In that case, Microsoft documents a specific fallback order:

1. The recording saves to the first co-organizer’s OneDrive, in the order co-organizers appear on the meeting options page. If that co-organizer also lacks OneDrive, it moves to the next co-organizer, and so on.
2. If none of the co-organizers have OneDrive, the recording goes to the OneDrive of the person who initiated the recording.
3. If that person also has no OneDrive, the recording is temporarily placed in async media storage instead.

Note that even when the recording lands in a co-organizer’s or initiator’s OneDrive, the original meeting organizer retains permissions to edit and share it.

There’s a separate note for Gallatin (a specific Microsoft cloud environment): recordings for meetings, events, and calls go to the OneDrive of whoever initiated the recording, and channel meeting recordings go to the associated SharePoint site.

Async media storage: a temporary safety net, not permanent storage

If a recording can’t be uploaded to OneDrive — because nobody involved has a OneDrive account, or because the relevant storage quota is full — it’s temporarily placed in async media storage. According to Microsoft’s documentation, this is not a substitute for proper storage:

• No automatic retry is attempted to move the recording into OneDrive or SharePoint later.
• The organizer must manually download the recording during this window.
• The organizer can attempt to re-upload it once they have a OneDrive or SharePoint license, or once storage space is freed up.
• If the recording isn’t downloaded within 21 days, it is deleted.

Practical recommendation: if your organization frequently has meetings organized by accounts without OneDrive licensing (shared mailboxes, resource accounts, guest-style accounts), it’s worth reviewing licensing assignments so recordings don’t end up depending on this 21-day window.

Video on Demand (VOD) recordings for large events

For events optimized for large audiences (such as town halls), the initial recording is stored in OneDrive, just like other event recordings. However, when an organizer publishes the event recording using Video on Demand (VOD), that published recording is stored in SharePoint Embedded File Storage Containers rather than a standard SharePoint document library.

A few operational specifics for VOD recordings:

• Only the event organizer can manage recordings of past large-audience events from their calendar.
• As an admin, you can locate the VOD recording inside the SharePoint Embedded Container, but you can only delete it through the Teams admin center — not directly in SharePoint.
• To delete a VOD event recording, go to Analytics and reports > Usage reports in the Teams admin center, open Teams events usage reports, locate the recording (named using a pattern like Teams Virtual Event VOD Container evt_{EventId}rec{RecordingId}), and select Delete event data.

Who can view a recording

Viewing permissions differ depending on whether the meeting was a standard meeting or a channel meeting.

For non-channel meetings:

• Meeting invitees automatically get a personal shared link to the recording — except external participants, who must be added manually by the organizer.
• If a meeting is forwarded, only people who are part of the resulting meeting chat thread automatically receive the recording link.
• Chats generally shouldn’t exceed 1,000 users for optimal performance, and forwarding to a group doesn’t necessarily add everyone in that group to the chat.
• For meetings with more than 250 participants, some attendees won’t automatically get file permissions and would need to be added manually by the recording owner.

For channel meetings: viewing permissions are inherited from the channel’s existing owner and member list in SharePoint, rather than assigned per meeting.

Microsoft’s documentation also recommends requiring recipients to be signed-in users when sharing a recording (using the “People in [Your Organization]” sharing option), noting that external sharing isn’t designed for distributing large files or large numbers of files.

Storage quotas and planning

Because Teams meeting recordings are ordinary files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, they count against the storage quotas for those services — they don’t have a separate “Teams recording” allowance.

Microsoft states that a one-hour recording is approximately 400 MB. For SMB admins, this is a useful planning number: an organization running regular recorded meetings can accumulate significant storage use fairly quickly, particularly in OneDrive accounts belonging to frequent meeting organizers.

Practical recommendation: periodically review OneDrive and SharePoint storage consumption for accounts that organize a lot of recorded meetings, and confirm your subscription’s included storage is sufficient before you need to consider purchasing additional storage.

Retention, transcripts, and captions

Recordings, transcripts, and captions in OneDrive and SharePoint follow the same general lifecycle as any other file in those services, including standard handling of ownership and retention if the account owner leaves the organization.

For structured retention, Microsoft documents that you can create an auto-apply retention label policy in Microsoft Purview that identifies Teams meeting recordings and their accompanying transcripts, allowing them to be deleted together on a defined schedule. One detail worth knowing: the minimum retention period for a retention label policy is one day — recordings and transcripts can be deleted as soon as one day after the policy applies.

Closed captions are available during playback only if transcription was turned on when the meeting was recorded, and this requires an assigned policy with transcription enabled. Microsoft also notes that captions aren’t fully supported if a recording is moved or copied away from its original OneDrive or SharePoint location — something to keep in mind if your organization has processes that relocate recording files after the fact.

Practical takeaways for SMB admins

• Don’t assume “Teams recordings” live in a single central location. Depending on meeting type, they can be in an individual’s OneDrive, a channel’s SharePoint library, or (temporarily) async media storage.
• Review OneDrive licensing for accounts that frequently organize meetings — including shared mailboxes and Teams Room resource accounts — since missing OneDrive access changes where and how long a recording is retrievable.
• Build storage planning into your Teams recording policy conversations, using the roughly 400 MB per hour figure as a starting reference point.
• Use retention labels deliberately if you want recordings and transcripts cleaned up automatically, keeping in mind the one-day minimum retention period.

Conclusion

Teams meeting recording storage isn’t a single, uniform system — it depends heavily on meeting type, licensing, and organizer configuration. For SMB admins, understanding these paths (OneDrive for most meetings, SharePoint for channel meetings and VOD, and the fallback chain when OneDrive isn’t available) makes it much easier to plan storage, set expectations around access, and avoid surprises like recordings expiring in async media storage. As with any operational policy area, it’s worth revisiting these settings periodically as your organization’s meeting habits and licensing evolve.

This article is a draft prepared for review and requires human validation before publication.