Meeting Notes Tab disappeared - replaced by 'Recap'

[BekaP510]

I have been using the Meeting Notes Tab to capture a running history of all project related discussions.

As at this week, the Meeting Notes Tab has disappeared from my list of Tabs and a new Tab has been added 'Recap'.

Is this a Microsoft Teams Feature roll out?  How can I retrieve the historic information that was stored on the Meeting Notes Tab?

Your help will be appreciated!  I'll also raise it with my local helpdesk, in case my Company has changed preferences, in the background.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@BekaP510 Hey, there are couple of things that may be happening here.

First, yes, Meeting Recap is the new way to access the summary of your meetings. If you have Teams Premium, the additional Intelligent Meeting Recap is brilliant.

• More info here: Meeting recap in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Support

Second, meeting notes are also being replaced with Microsoft Loop components as 'Collaborative Meeting Notes'. This may be the case for your organisation. 

• If you have an old meeting with meeting notes, there should be a banner that lets you download a copy of them that looks like this: 
  
• If you weren't the meeting organiser, you may need to get them to download them first or give you permission.
• More info here: Now in Public preview & Targeted release: Collaborative meeting notes in Teams meetings - Microsoft ...

If you're still stuck, you may be able to find your old meeting notes as .mht files in your OneDrive under My files > Microsoft Teams Data > Wiki

Opening your meeting notes .mht files

Here are a few options to open your meeting notes .mht files that you've downloaded:

Open your .mht file in Microsoft Word

This is pretty handy if you need it in an editable format and want to save it as a .doc file

• Right-click on the .mht file
• Select Open with
• Select Word (or if it's not available, select "Choose another app" and then select Word)

You could also open it up in Notepad or any other HTML editor if you want to see the code.

Open your .mht file in Microsoft Edge in IE Mode

To open .mht file in Microsoft Edge, enable Internet Explorer mode (IE Mode)

• Select Settings and more (...) at the top-right
• Select Settings
• Select Default Browser
• For "Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode (IE mode)" choose Allow from the drop-down menu
• Select Restart

When you open your .mht file, it should display properly and a banner will tell you that IE mode was used to open the file.

Open the file from OneDrive online

This is a bit of a funny one. If you have your .mht files in your Microsoft Teams Data/Wiki folder, when you select the file to open it (not download it) from OneDrive online, it downloads it as a .eml file instead and opens in Outlook 🤷🏻

Hopefully one of those options works for you. I think the Word option is probably the simplest and makes it easier to manage the meeting notes. You can set Word to be the default application for .mht files if that option works for you.

19/8/23 Update: adding this Microsoft Support article for more guidance: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/access-wiki-meeting-notes-in-microsoft-teams-a15eb03c-9f4...

[#3]

Legend @HelloBenTeoh - many thanks for the info! 

[#4]

@HelloBenTeoh tried to download notes (I am the meeting organizer) and mht file just turns up blank. losing a year of all-staff meeting notes and getting a little frustrated that this kind of thing happens everytime microsoft makes slight change

[#5]

My mht files are blank also. I've lost over a year of notes.

[#6]

@kirutherford @BekaP510 That's not good. It could be an issue with the program you're using to open it.

Here are a few options to open your meeting notes .mht files that you've downloaded:

Open your .mht file in Microsoft Word

This is pretty handy if you need it in an editable format and want to save it as a .doc file

• Right-click on the .mht file
• Select Open with
• Select Word (or if it's not available, select "Choose another app" and then select Word)

You could also open it up in Notepad or any other HTML editor if you want to see the code.

Open your .mht file in Microsoft Edge in IE Mode

To open .mht file in Microsoft Edge, enable Internet Explorer mode (IE Mode)

• Select Settings and more (...) at the top-right
• Select Settings
• Select Default Browser
• For "Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode (IE mode)" choose Allow from the drop-down menu
• Select Restart

When you open your .mht file, it should display properly and a banner will tell you that IE mode was used to open the file.

Open the file from OneDrive online

This is a bit of a funny one. If you have your .mht files in your Microsoft Teams Data/Wiki folder, when you select the file to open it (not download it) from OneDrive online, it downloads it as a .eml file instead and opens in Outlook 🤷🏻

Hopefully one of those options works for you. I think the Word option is probably the simplest and makes it easier to manage the meeting notes. You can set Word to be the default application for .mht files if that option works for you.

Good luck! 

[#7]

That worked @HelloBenTeoh! I had to manually search in the available apps list, as the default apps were set to browsers in my company, but it went perfectly.

Ok! I'll save the files in SharePoint and use them for reference only. I'll move to tracking meeting notes, key agreements and actions in Confluence now.

[#8]

@BekaP510 phew! I'll update my original reply with the added instructions. 

It may be worth talking to your helpdesk to get them to do some messaging about this too. There could be others in the same boat as you.

[#9]

@HelloBenTeoh Very useful information as I too had the same issue. Recap has appeared as the replacement tab which is a very different feature to meeting notes from what I understand. I don't think I have access to collaborative meeting notes as I can't find it. Is there any other alternative to use to record meeting content? Many thanks H

[#10]

@harrietrad Hey, no worries. You're right - recap is a way to gather all the information about the meetings (recording, transcript, shared files etc) and the new collaborative meeting notes are replacing the previous notes

If you open the meeting in Teams, the collaborative meeting notes should sit below the meeting information in the 'Details' tab.

When you're in the meeting, there should be a new 'Notes' app in the top

The Microsoft Support pages now reference the new notes: Take meeting notes in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Support

If they're not available yet, I'd suggest using OneDrive for now until you have access to the new collaborative meeting notes.

[#11]

I just tried Meeting Notes and Recap for the first time on July 27, 2023, as the meeting organizer. After the meeting, I can see the Notes in Recap, but none of the participants can. Is there a sharing setting that I'm missing?

[#12]

@lisa white - There could be a few things here:

• If your participants are internal to your organisation, check with your admin to see if they're on Public Preview. You may be, but they may not be.
• If your participants are external, they won't have access to the meeting notes. This is a known issue.
• You can also try and send them a link to the meeting notes to see if they can open them.
  1.  Select More actions (...) at the top-right of your notes
  2. Select Copy link

 

Here's some more info about the limitations from Now in Public preview & Targeted release: Collaborative meeting notes in Teams meetings - Microsoft ...

Known issues 

• External and guest participants can’t access meeting notes before or during the meeting. 

• If you @mention a user while editing Collaborative notes on Microsoft 365, you’ll need to give access to users using the Share and notify

• You might see an error message: 

  • If you join a meeting with over 100 attendees. 

  • If you are an attendee of over 300 meetings that include tasks. 

NOTE: We have removed the previous Teams meeting notes solution. You can still download your previous wiki notes locally. Participants who didn’t create the notes may need to be granted access by the meeting creator. 

Known limitations 

• Teams doesn’t support channel meetings, ad hoc Meet Now meetings, and 1:1 calls. 

• Mobile clients are not yet supported—this is coming soon. Please follow the status on the roadmap for item 128652 

• If the meeting owner is using a mailbox stored on an on-premise Exchange server, Collaborative notes can’t be added to the meeting at the time of scheduling. To add Collaborative notes, the meeting owner will need to first send the meeting invite, and then later add Collaborative notes. 

Availability

To be able to use this feature, users need to be members of the Teams Public Preview and use the Windows, macOS or web (Edge, Chrome) Teams client. Other meeting participants are not required to be members of the Teams Public Preview. 

[#13]

@HelloBenTeoh 

My organization recently lost access to Notes, several different teams across the organization, and all of us have lost the ability to retrieve/see Meeting Notes and none of us have the 'Notes' button inside of meetings. There are no new updates to Teams, we all have the most up-to-date version.

'Notes' is not available within the virtual meeting

'Meeting Notes' is no longer available within the chat window.

There are no available updates:

The option "In Details, select Add an agenda others can edit" doesn't exist in our meeting creation window.

**Edit: This is for standard (non-channel) meetings.

What am I missing?

[#14]

@cNickel Hey, it feels like this are a bit clunky at the moment as the transition to collaborative meeting notes is happening. I believe it's still in Public Preview, so not everyone will have access to it. It may be worth having a chat with admin to enable it. Here's a link with more info: Public preview in Microsoft Teams

For new meetings where you want to take notes, I'd suggest adding a OneNote tab in your meetings for now until the new meeting notes roll out. There are plans to make them compatible with OneNote so hopefully it's not too hard to merge the two.

If you need access to previous meeting notes, my original reply should help.

[#15]

@HelloBenTeoh 

New "notes" adding works fine, but I (as a author and also organizator of meeting) cant see any content on tab Recap - just one of my member can, other see the same as me - blank space:

I see notes only if I am on meeting details in calendar. Looks that there are some issues.

[#16]

@HelloBenTeoh 

How can I access my old notes if I use teams for Mac? 

[#17]

@cdrojas if the banner to download the old notes isn’t appearing, I’d try using the web version of Teams