How do I turn on meeting transcription?

To turn on meeting transcription in Teams, click More actions, then Record and transcribe, then Start transcription; everyone sees a banner when it begins. In Google Meet, transcription lives under Meeting tools on eligible Workspace plans. Zoom shows live captions free but saves full transcripts only on paid plans.

When transcription is grayed out or turned off in Teams, an admin policy is the usual cause: transcription must be enabled in the Teams admin center, and the organizer's license has to include it. Meet has equivalent Workspace admin gates.

If you cannot win the admin battle, the fallback always works: record with consent on your own device and transcribe afterward. Same text, no meeting-platform politics.

The fallback route runs on conference transcription you control.