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My Teams recording expired. Can I get it back?

Possibly, if you act quickly, and no if too much time has passed. An expired Teams recording is deleted rather than archived. It goes to the OneDrive or SharePoint recycle bin first, and while it is sitting there you can restore it yourself. Once it clears that bin, it is gone.

So the first thing to do is stop reading and go check the recycle bin of the account that holds the recording. Everything else can wait a few minutes.

What expiry actually is

Teams meeting recordings can carry an automatic expiration date. When it passes, the file is deleted. Nobody presses anything. It is not a warning, it is the deletion itself, scheduled in advance by a setting an administrator controls.

The setting exists so that organizations are not paying to store years of routine stand-ups forever, which is fair enough. The problem is that the default applies to every recording equally, and a call where a client agreed to something is stored under the same rule as a Monday check-in.

Expiry is separate from your organization's wider retention policy. Both can delete a recording, and they are configured in different places, so an answer about one does not tell you about the other.

Getting it back, in order

Check the recycle bin. Open the OneDrive of the person who recorded the meeting, or the SharePoint site if it was a channel meeting, and look in the recycle bin. Deleted files sit there for a period before being purged. If it is there, restore it and then move it somewhere that expiry does not govern.

Ask an administrator. If it is not in the recycle bin you can see, there is often a second-stage bin that only administrators can reach, holding files for a further period. This is worth an email even if it feels like a long shot, because it costs you nothing and it is the last real chance.

Ask whether anyone downloaded it. Someone on the call may have saved a copy at the time. Less likely, but people do this.

Check whether a transcript survived. A transcript is a separate item and does not always follow the same fate as the video. It is not the recording, but if the question is what was said, it may be enough.

If none of those work, the recording is gone. There is no support ticket that undoes it and no archive it quietly moved to.

Stopping it happening again

For recordings that matter, do not leave them where the expiry rule applies. Download the ones you need and store them somewhere you control, or move them into a location governed by a different policy. If you do this regularly, ask your administrator whether the default expiry can be changed or turned off for your team.

The habit worth building is simple: if a recording is evidence of something rather than a convenience, get a copy of it the same week, not the same year.

The version of this that does not expire

The root of the problem is that the recording was never yours. It was made by your organization's system and stored under your organization's rules, and those rules can delete it.

Jotted records from your own computer rather than joining the call, and writes the file straight to your own disk. There is no expiry date on it, because there is no policy attached to it. It is a file in a folder, and it stays there until you delete it. On the free plan nothing is uploaded anywhere at all, and even on the paid plan the local file is never touched. There is more detail on where recordings are stored and what happens if you cancel, including the parts that are less convenient.

That does not bring back the one you lost. Go and check the recycle bin first.

Related

Common questions

Can I recover an expired Teams recording?

Sometimes. An expired recording is deleted to the OneDrive or SharePoint recycle bin, and while it is there you can restore it. After it clears that bin, and any administrator-only bin behind it, it cannot be recovered.

Why did my Teams recording delete itself?

Teams meeting recordings can carry an automatic expiration date set by an administrator. When the date passes the file is deleted, without anyone choosing to delete it.

Is expiry the same as my company's retention policy?

No. They are separate settings configured in different places, and either one can remove a recording. An answer about one does not tell you what the other will do.

How do I stop Teams recordings from expiring?

Download the ones that matter and store them somewhere you control, or move them to a location the expiry rule does not govern. Whether the default can be changed is up to your administrator.

Does the transcript expire too?

A transcript is a separate item and does not always share the recording's fate, so it is worth checking. It is not the same as having the video, but it may answer what was actually said.

Updated 24 August 2026

Microsoft changes retention defaults, expiry behaviour and recycle bin periods fairly often, and your organization may have its own settings on top, so check with your administrator before relying on a detail here. If anything on this page is out of date, email hello@getjotted.com and it gets fixed.

Keep the next one where nothing can expire it.

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