How do I set up my meeting recording so they stay available indefinitely?

Hi @Meredith Wellard,

I believe there’s an approach that can help meet your requirement, and I’d be more than happy to walk you through it so you can explore the options that best fit your needs.

If you have admin permissions, one of the first things you can do is adjust the recording expiration setting in Teams: In the Teams admin center, go to Meetings > Meeting policies > Recording & transcription, and turn off the option “Recordings and transcriptions automatically expire.”

This ensures that newly created recordings and transcripts won’t be deleted automatically after a certain period. You can refer to this guide for more details: Manage Teams recording policies for meetings and events - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

That said, since your requirement is driven by legal retention, it’s really important not to rely solely on the Teams expiration setting. The reason is that end users still have the ability to adjust expiration dates themselves, so it doesn’t provide a strong level of control from a compliance perspective.

For long-term retention, I’d definitely recommend adding another layer by using Microsoft Purview retention policies. These policies allow you to enforce how long recordings must be kept regardless of user actions, and they take precedence over any Teams recording expiration settings. This makes them a much more reliable and appropriate solution, especially for legal or regulatory scenarios where data preservation is critical.

It’s also worth noting where recordings are stored, so you can scope your policies correctly. Recordings from private meetings are stored in the organizer’s OneDrive, while recordings from channel meetings are stored in SharePoint. Your retention policies should cover both locations to ensure full protection.

You can find more details here: Manage compliance for Teams recordings of meetings and events - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn

If you’re not an admin, it would be best to reach out to your IT team so they can help implement these settings for you.

If anything is unclear or you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to leave a comment under this post. That’s the best way for me to stay notified and follow up with you promptly.

I hope this gives you a helpful perspective and something practical you can apply to your scenario. Thanks again for taking time!

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