How to turn a 1–3 hour Zoom, Teams or Meet recording into a transcript, decisions and action items
A two-and-a-half-hour planning session, steering committee or workshop leaves a recording nobody will play again, and somewhere in it are the decisions and action items everyone will remember differently next week. This guide is for that file: where Zoom, Teams and Google Meet put it, how to turn it into a searchable transcript, and how to get a decisions-and-actions list where every line can be checked against the audio in one click.
Have a recording like this? Packs from $4, credits never expire → timestamps, overview. Summary free to read.
Why long meetings need a different workflow
Live note-taking works for a 30-minute stand-up. It breaks down after the first hour, for three reasons. The note-taker stops contributing, decisions drift and get quietly reversed at minute 140, and the people who most need the outcome were not there.
A recording solves capture but not retrieval: nobody replays two hours to confirm one date. Turn it into text with a timestamp on every line and every claim in the summary points back to the second it was said.
Step 1: find the recording file
Most of the friction is here, so it is worth knowing where each tool puts the file.
- Zoom, local recording: by default a Zoom folder inside Documents, one sub-folder per meeting. If "record a separate audio file" is on in your recording settings, there is an audio-only M4A next to the MP4.
- Zoom, cloud recording: sign in on the Zoom website, open Recordings, pick the meeting and download. Cloud recordings usually offer an audio-only M4A as well as the MP4.
- Microsoft Teams: the recording is saved to the OneDrive of the person who started it, in a Recordings folder, or to the channel's SharePoint files for channel meetings. Open it from the meeting chat and download the MP4.
- Google Meet: the recording lands in the organizer's Google Drive, in a Meet Recordings folder, as an MP4. Download it from Drive.
Step 2: upload the whole file, do not split it
Drop the file on the home page. Accepted types are .mp3, .wav, .mp4, .m4a, .flac, .ogg, .webm and .mov, up to 10 hours and 5 GB, so a three-hour board meeting is well inside the limit. Do not cut it into parts: a single upload gives one transcript with timestamps that run from 0:00 to the end, which is what you want when someone asks "when exactly did we agree that?". You add your email after the upload so the transcript is saved to you and you are told when it is ready. Processing runs at about two minutes per hour of audio.
Step 3: read the summary and chapters before the transcript
A 2-hour meeting is roughly 18,000 to 22,000 words of transcript. Do not start there. Open the Intelligence tab first: a summary of what the meeting was about, chapters with timestamps that show how the time was actually spent, and the key quotes. Chapters show where 50 minutes went on a ten-minute topic, and jump you to the part you missed.
Step 4: pull out decisions and action items, with proof
Open AI Chat on the transcript page. The ready prompts under the box include extract action items, find key decisions and list unanswered questions. Run all three. Each answer quotes or paraphrases the line it is based on and includes a timestamp as a button; click it and the audio plays from that second while the transcript scrolls to the line.
That makes the list trustworthy: before sending, click through every decision and listen ten seconds either side. It takes minutes and catches the decision that was later walked back.
Good follow-ups for long meetings: "Which decisions were reopened later?", "List every deadline mentioned, with who it applies to", "Which items were parked for next time?"
Step 5: turn it into something you can send
Ask AI Chat to "make this into a Word document with decisions, action items and open questions", or an Excel sheet with one row per action, owner and due date. The file is created and kept under Resources on the recording, ready to download and attach to the follow-up email. The transcript downloads as TXT or DOCX for the shared drive, or SRT or VTT for captions on the video. Later, finding any moment in the recording takes seconds rather than a replay.
A worked example
Quarterly planning, 2 hours 15 minutes, recorded in Teams
An operations lead at a 60-person company ran a quarterly planning session with eight people. She downloaded the MP4 from her OneDrive Recordings folder, uploaded it, and the transcript was ready in under five minutes. The chapters showed 48 minutes had gone on hiring. "Find key decisions" returned seven decisions; clicking through them showed that one, a price change, had been agreed at 0:41 and reversed at 1:52, so it went into the follow-up as "not decided". "Extract action items" returned eleven actions, nine with a named owner. She sent a Word document from AI Chat 25 minutes after uploading. The meeting used 135 minutes, so a $4 pack of 500 minutes covers three meetings of that length.
Recording tips that make the action list better
What you get for each meeting
- A transcript with a clickable timestamp on every line, searchable with ⌘K or Ctrl K.
- The Intelligence tab: summary, chapters and key quotes.
- AI Chat with playable timestamps, which can make Word, PDF, Excel or SRT files into Resources.
- Downloads in TXT, SRT, VTT and DOCX, and 99+ spoken languages.
Price: $4 for 500 minutes, $8 for 1,000, $12 for 2,000 and $24 for 5,000. Minutes never expire, and you pay by card through Paddle. For more on very long files, see how to transcribe a 7-hour recording without splitting it, and for team-wide use, meetings at work.
Frequently asked
Can I upload a two- or three-hour meeting recording in one go?
Yes. Upload the whole file; there is no need to split it. Files up to 10 hours and 5 GB are accepted, and a two-hour meeting is usually ready in about four minutes. Timestamps run continuously from the start of the recording to the end.
Should I upload the MP4 video or the audio-only file?
Either works. If your meeting tool saved an audio-only M4A next to the MP4, upload that: it is a fraction of the size, so it uploads faster, and the transcript is the same because only the audio is transcribed.
Will the transcript show who said each line?
No. The transcript gives every line with its timestamp but does not tag who was speaking. For action items, the reliable fix is to say the owner's name out loud when you agree on an action, for example: Dana owns the vendor email by Friday. AI Chat then picks the name up from the words.
How do I get the decisions and action items out?
Open AI Chat on the transcript page and use the ready prompts for action items and key decisions, or ask in your own words. Every answer carries timestamps you can click to hear the moment, and you can ask AI Chat to make the list into a Word, PDF or Excel file that is saved under Resources.
Which file types can I upload?
MP3, WAV, MP4, M4A, FLAC, OGG, WEBM and MOV. That covers the files Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet save, and the formats most phone and desktop recorders produce.
What does a long meeting cost?
Packs start at $4 for 500 minutes, and the minutes never expire. A 2-hour 15-minute meeting uses 135 minutes, so a $4 pack covers three meetings of that length with minutes left over. Larger packs are $8 for 1,000 minutes, $12 for 2,000 and $24 for 5,000. You pay by card through Paddle.
Upload the meeting recording you already have. Transcript with clickable timestamps, summary and chapters, decisions and action items you can check against the audio. Packs from $4 for 500 minutes that never expire.
Upload your meeting file →