Microsoft Explains Why Teams Meeting Recordings Suddenly Disappear

Microsoft says missing recordings are one of the most frustrating Microsoft Teams support issues, but the files usually are not permanently deleted.

The company explained that Teams meeting recordings often appear missing because OneDrive or SharePoint automatically moves them to the recycle bin after expiration dates are reached. In many cases, users can still restore the files before permanent deletion.

Teams recordings are stored outside the app

Microsoft reminded users that Teams recordings are not stored directly inside the Teams application itself.

Instead, recordings are typically saved to either Microsoft OneDrive or SharePoint, depending on the meeting type and organizer setup. This affects several meeting formats, including automatically recorded meetings, manually recorded sessions, delegate-created meetings, Meet now calls, Outlook-scheduled meetings, Teams-scheduled meetings, recurring meetings, webinars, and town halls.

Because the recordings live in cloud storage services, retention and expiration settings from OneDrive and SharePoint also apply to Teams content.

Why Teams recordings suddenly disappear

According to Microsoft, OneDrive and SharePoint continuously monitor expiration policies tied to recordings and transcripts.

Once the expiration date arrives, the services automatically move recordings and transcripts to the recycle bin. Users often assume the files vanished completely, even though the content may still exist inside the recycle bin recovery system.

Microsoft says admins can manage this behavior through the “Recordings and transcripts automatically expire” setting inside the Teams admin center. Organizations can disable the policy entirely or customize expiration behavior based on company needs.

Users still have time to recover recordings

Microsoft says recordings and transcripts moved to the recycle bin remain recoverable for 93 days.

During that recovery window, users or admins can restore the files before permanent deletion occurs. After the 93-day period ends, the content may no longer be recoverable.

The clarification comes shortly after Microsoft Teams experienced a major slowdown issue recently that affected performance for some users. Microsoft says that the outage has now been resolved.

The company is also preparing faster Office file previews for Teams mobile users, while security researchers recently warned that threat actors have abused Teams chats to distribute ModeloRAT malware.

Via Neowin