Zoom and meeting transcription without a bot in your call

Who this is for

People who record a meeting, then need a document: a consultant writing up a client call, a researcher with a stack of interviews, a manager who wants decisions and owners in writing, a team that records an all-hands for people who missed it. If you want live captions during the call or a bot that takes notes in real time, an app like Otter or Fireflies is a better fit. If you want a file in, a document out, read on.

How to do it with a Zoom recording

1. Record the meeting to your computer or the cloud and download the MP4 or M4A file. Zoom produces both a video and an audio-only file; the audio file is smaller and works fine.
2. Upload it on the home page. Up to 10 files per job, 4 GB each.
3. Use the Meeting notes preset or write your own: names of the attendees, whether you want a summary, decisions, action items with owners.
4. Download the Word document, with the summary at the top.

The same works for Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or phone call recordings, as long as they are MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, FLAC, MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV.

What the output looks like

• A summary of what was discussed, if you ask for one
• Decisions and action items with owners, if you ask for them. Owners are only named when the recording supports it, and names come from your brief
• The full transcript with speaker labels and a timestamp on each turn, so you can jump to the part of the recording that matters
• [inaudible 12:04] marks where audio was unclear, so you can check instead of trusting a guess

Example: a weekly team meeting

A team records its weekly call, 50 minutes, 4 people. The meeting lead uploads the audio file and writes: Transcript plus a short summary, decisions and action items with owners at the top. Attendees: Sam, Priya, Jo, Ana. Timestamps every turn.

The document comes back with the summary and the decisions first. Action items are listed with an owner where the recording makes one clear, and without an owner where it does not, so you can see what still needs assigning. The full transcript follows, with speakers named and a time on each turn, so you can open the recording at that moment to double check a quote. Anything unclear is marked [inaudible] with its time.

Zoom's own transcript vs this

Zoom can produce a transcript of cloud recordings on paid plans, usually a plain text or VTT file with names taken from participants. If that is enough for you, use it. We are useful when you want a formatted document with a summary and action items, when the meeting happened on a platform without good transcription, or when the free plan did not record to the cloud. Which Zoom features are available depends on your plan; check Zoom's help pages for what your account offers.

Limits

• Crosstalk and several people talking at once cause misses. Say who attended, and check the labels.
• Poor conference-room audio lowers accuracy. A recording per speaker is better than one far-away microphone.
• We do not join live calls and cannot caption in real time.
• Confidential or HIPAA-covered meetings should not be uploaded. Files are processed on our servers in Germany and read by our AI provider in the US under terms that exclude training, and are deleted after 30 days.

Cost

A meeting is one file whatever its length. On Starter, $25 a month covers 20 files, so a weekly team meeting plus a few client calls fits. See pricing.

Tips that improve a meeting transcript

• Ask people to introduce themselves at the start; it helps the speaker labels.
• Keep the attendee names in the brief, spelled as you want them.
• Record in a quiet room and, if you can, record each person's audio on their own track.
• If a meeting has many people with similar voices, expect to check the labels.
• Do not upload recordings that contain information you are not allowed to send to an outside service.

Questions

More about Transcribe

Sources (checked 2026-11-09): www.zoom.com/en/blog/ai-transcription/