Let's be honest. We’ve all been there. You finish a meeting, realize you said something slightly cringeworthy—or maybe you just shared a screen you shouldn't have—and suddenly that "Recording has started" notification feels like a threat. You need it gone. Now. But Microsoft doesn't exactly make it easy to find the "shredder" icon.
Basically, the process for how to delete a recording in teams has changed a lot over the last couple of years. It used to be all about Microsoft Stream, that weird internal video portal nobody quite understood. Now? Everything lives in OneDrive or SharePoint. If you’re looking for a giant "Delete" button inside the Teams chat window itself, you're going to be looking for a long time. It’s rarely there.
Where Your Teams Recordings Actually Live
Most people think the video is "in" Teams. It isn't. Teams is just the window you use to look at your files. Depending on what kind of meeting you had, that file is sitting in one of two places.
If it was a standard one-on-one call or a private group chat, the recording is in the OneDrive of the person who clicked "Record." If it was a formal Channel meeting—the kind you see in a specific team's feed—it’s tucked away in a SharePoint folder.
Why does this matter? Because you can’t delete what you can’t find.
To kill a recording from a private chat, you've got to open your OneDrive, find the folder literally named "Recordings," and nuke it from there. For channel meetings, you have to go to the "Files" tab in that specific Teams channel, open the "Recordings" folder, and delete it. Simple? Kinda. But if you aren't the person who started the recording, you might be out of luck.
The Permission Headache: Who Can Actually Delete?
This is where things get annoying. You can't just go around deleting other people's recordings. That would be chaos.
Generally, only two types of people have the "delete" power:
- The person who pressed the record button.
- The meeting organizer (the person who sent the invite).
If you were just an attendee and you're horrified by how you looked on camera, you basically have to ask the organizer to do the dirty work for you. There is no "delete my part" feature. It’s all or nothing.
In a big corporate environment, your IT admin might have set up "Auto-Expiration" policies. Microsoft introduced this a while back to stop companies from wasting petabytes of storage on "test" meetings. Often, recordings are set to delete themselves after 60 or 120 days. If you're okay with the video existing for a few months, you might not have to do anything at all. But if it’s an emergency? You need to hunt down the owner.
How to delete a recording in teams when it's in a Channel
Channel meetings are different beasts. Since they belong to the "Team" and not an individual, the files live in the SharePoint site associated with that team.
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Go to the channel. Click Files. Open Recordings.
You'll see the .mp4 file there. If you have "Owner" or "Member" permissions with edit rights, you can click the three dots (the ellipsis) and hit delete. If the "Delete" option is greyed out, your IT department has probably locked down your permissions. At that point, you’re calling the Help Desk.
The OneDrive Path (The most common way)
For the vast majority of us, how to delete a recording in teams starts with a trip to the web browser.
Open your browser. Go to Office.com. Hit the OneDrive icon. Look for "My Files" and then "Recordings."
Everything you’ve ever recorded in a private chat is there. You can select multiple files and mass-delete them if you're doing a digital spring cleaning. Once you delete them here, they disappear from the Teams chat history too. Well, the link stays there, but when people click it, they’ll get a "File Not Found" error. It’s effective.
What Happens to the Recording in the Chat?
This is a point of confusion for a lot of users. When you delete the file from OneDrive or SharePoint, the "thumbnail" or the "link" in the Teams chat window doesn't magically vanish into thin air.
It stays there like a ghost.
People will still see that a meeting happened and that it was recorded. But the actual video data is gone. If someone clicks "Play," they get a white screen or a permission error. If you want to remove the message about the recording from the chat thread, you have to hover over that specific message in Teams, click the three dots, and select "Delete" there too—assuming your admin allows you to delete your own messages.
Common Misconceptions and Failures
People often think that leaving a meeting or "ending" the meeting for everyone deletes the recording. It doesn't. The recording keeps processing in the background until the last person leaves or the time limit hits.
Another big one? Thinking that deleting the meeting invite from your Outlook calendar deletes the recording.
Nope.
The recording is a file. The calendar invite is a schedule. They are roommates, not twins. Deleting one has zero impact on the other.
Also, watch out for the Recycle Bin. When you delete a Teams recording from OneDrive, it isn't "gone-gone." It goes to your OneDrive Recycle Bin. It stays there for 93 days (usually) before it's purged forever. If you’re trying to delete something for legal reasons or strict privacy, you need to go into the Recycle Bin and "Delete from Recycle Bin" to truly vaporize it.
Quick Steps for Fast Action
If you're in a rush, follow this exact sequence:
- Identify the owner: Who pressed record? If it wasn't you, stop. Contact them.
- Locate the file: Check the Teams chat first. Click the "Open" or "View" link. This usually takes you directly to the SharePoint or OneDrive folder where the file lives.
- The Web Interface: It is always easier to delete from the web browser version of OneDrive/SharePoint than the Teams app itself.
- The Ellipsis: Click the three dots next to the file name.
- Confirm: Hit delete and then clear your Recycle Bin if you’re being thorough.
Handling Permissions Issues
Sometimes you'll find the file, you'll click delete, and you'll get a "You do not have permission" error. This is common in highly regulated industries like finance or healthcare.
In these cases, Microsoft Purview might be holding the file. If your company has a "Legal Hold" on your account, you literally cannot delete anything. The delete button might look like it works, but the file is retained in a hidden folder for compliance. If you're in this boat, there is no "hack" to get around it. You'll have to talk to your legal or IT compliance team to explain why the recording needs to be removed.
Actionable Next Steps
To ensure you have full control over your digital footprint in Teams, take these steps immediately:
- Check your "Recordings" folder in OneDrive right now. You’d be surprised how many "test" meetings from three years ago are still sitting there taking up space.
- Verify your default expiration settings. Go to your Teams settings (if your admin allows) or ask IT what the "Global Expiration Policy" is. If it’s set to "Never," you're responsible for your own cleanup.
- Standardize who records. In recurring meetings, try to make sure the same person always hits the record button. It makes finding and managing those files ten times easier than having them scattered across five different people's OneDrives.
- Empty the Bin. If you deleted something sensitive today, go to your OneDrive Recycle Bin and manually purge it to ensure it can't be recovered by anyone with access to your account.
Managing these files is basic digital hygiene. Teams makes it easy to start a recording, but it hides the "off" switch behind layers of SharePoint architecture. Knowing exactly where that file sits is the difference between a quick fix and a panicked afternoon of clicking through menus.