In today’s digital workplace, Microsoft Teams has become one of the most widely used platforms for remote collaboration. Despite its strong integration with SharePoint and OneDrive, certain limitations still affect the efficiency and smoothness of collaborative workflows—especially when it comes to managing meeting recordings.
One key issue concerns the download permissions for the video and transcript files generated after a meeting. By default, only the meeting organizer—who is also considered the owner of the recording—can download the content or move it to another location. Other participants may view or share the video but are not allowed to download it unless explicitly granted access by the owner.
A tedious, repetitive process
Enabling download access for other users involves several manual steps:
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Access the Stream page where the video is hosted.
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Click on the left-hand “Share” menu.
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Select “Manage access”.
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Click the small “Grant access” icon (found in the top-right corner next to the “…” and “X” buttons).
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Enter the email addresses of the participants who need download access (e.g.,
name.surname@company.com). -
Click the now-enabled “Grant access” button.
Only after completing this process will other participants be able to download the video and transcript. Unfortunately, this must be repeated for each individual recording, as there is currently no way to define default or global permissions—not at the team, channel, or organizational level.
The feedback submitted to Microsoft
To address this limitation, an official feedback request has been submitted on Microsoft’s portal. The suggestion proposes adding more flexible, centralized ways to manage access permissions for meeting recordings. Ideas include:
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Automatically granting download rights to all meeting participants.
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Allowing team or channel owners to define default permission rules.
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Providing an organization-wide policy to control default access behavior for recordings.
Anyone who finds this enhancement useful is encouraged to review and vote for the idea at the following link:
Final thoughts
Improving download permission management for Teams recordings is not just a matter of convenience—it’s a step toward greater operational efficiency and reduced administrative overhead for users. Addressing this limitation would be a meaningful improvement for digital collaboration across organizations.
