Teams transcript formatter

The purpose of this tool is to make Microsoft Teams meeting transcripts easier to read and analyse using tools such as NVivo, QualCoder, or (slightly unconventional) Obsidian via obsidian-chat-view plugin.

It processes .vtt transcripts downloaded from Microsoft Teams/Stream, merges adjacent blocks from the same speaker, and outputs a clean, formatted text file. Speaker names can optionally be renamed and assigned prefixes, and the output format is customisable via a template.

Installation

Run with uvx

No installation required — run it once-off with uvx:

uvx teams-transcript-formatter transcript.vtt

Install with pip or uv

Install from PyPI:

pip install teams-transcript-formatter
# or
uv tool install teams-transcript-formatter

After installation, teams-transcript-formatter will be available on your PATH:

teams-transcript-formatter transcript.vtt

From source

If you want to make changes to the source code you can clone the repository and install in editable mode:

git clone https://github.com/jmarshrossney/teams-transcript-formatter
cd teams-transcript-formatter
uv sync

Usage

Command-line tool

The teams-transcript-formatter script takes one or more .vtt files and prints the formatted output to stdout. To save the output to .txt files instead (with the naming convention <original_stem>_formatted.txt), use the -o flag to specify an output directory.

# Basic: keep original speaker names, default formatting
teams-transcript-formatter transcript.vtt

# Rename speakers (e.g. for an interview)
teams-transcript-formatter \
    --rename "John Smith=Interviewer" --rename "Jane Doe=Student" \
    --prefix "Interviewer=> " --prefix "Student=< " \
    transcript.vtt

# Custom output format
teams-transcript-formatter \
    --rename "John Smith=JS" --rename "Jane Doe=JD" \
    --template "{speaker}: {speech} [{timestamp}]" \
    transcript.vtt

Run teams-transcript-formatter -h for full guidance, including shell completion.

Flags

Examples

Say we have a Teams transcript file named transcript.vtt:

$ head -11 transcript.vtt
WEBVTT

91b3f3c3-44c6-4a8b-8c0a-add105d816bd/32-0
00:00:10.087 --> 00:00:13.130
<v John Smith>Hello, I am the interviewer.</v>

91b3f3c3-44c6-4a8b-8c0a-add105d816bd/32-1
00:00:13.130 --> 00:00:16.270
<v Jane Doe>Nice. I am the student being interviewed,
and I have many things to say.</v>

Default format

No flags — original speaker names, default template, print to stdout.

$ teams-transcript-formatter transcript.vtt
John Smith | Hello, I am the interviewer. | 00:00:10

Jane Doe | Nice. I am the student being interviewed, and I have many things to say. | 00:00:13

Rename speakers

Map original names to display names with --rename.

$ teams-transcript-formatter \
    --rename "John Smith=Interviewer" --rename "Jane Doe=Student" \
    -o . transcript.vtt
$ head -3 transcript_formatted.txt
Interviewer | Hello, I am the interviewer. | 00:00:10

Student | Nice. I am the student being interviewed, and I have many things to say. | 00:00:13

Add prefixes

Combine --rename with --prefix to visually distinguish speakers. Prefixes are keyed on the display name (after renaming).

$ teams-transcript-formatter \
    --rename "John Smith=Interviewer" --rename "Jane Doe=Student" \
    --prefix "Interviewer=> " --prefix "Student=< " \
    -o . transcript.vtt
$ head -3 transcript_formatted.txt
> Interviewer | Hello, I am the interviewer. | 00:00:10

< Student | Nice. I am the student being interviewed, and I have many things to say. | 00:00:13

Custom output template

Control the output format with --template. Available placeholders: {prefix}, {speaker}, {speech}, {timestamp}.

$ teams-transcript-formatter \
    --rename "John Smith=JS" --rename "Jane Doe=JD" \
    --template "[{timestamp}] {speaker}: {speech}" \
    -o . transcript.vtt
$ head -3 transcript_formatted.txt
[00:00:10] JS: Hello, I am the interviewer.

[00:00:13] JD: Nice. I am the student being interviewed, and I have many things to say.

Full customisation

All three flags together — rename, prefix, and template.

$ teams-transcript-formatter \
    --rename "John Smith=Interviewer" --rename "Jane Doe=Student" \
    --prefix "Interviewer=> " --prefix "Student=< " \
    --template "{prefix}{speaker}: {speech} [{timestamp}]" \
    -o . transcript.vtt
$ head -3 transcript_formatted.txt
> Interviewer: Hello, I am the interviewer. [00:00:10]

< Student: Nice. I am the student being interviewed, and I have many things to say. [00:00:13]

Selective prefixes

Pass an empty value to --prefix to suppress the prefix for a given speaker.

$ teams-transcript-formatter \
    --rename "John Smith=Interviewer" --rename "Jane Doe=Student" \
    --prefix "Interviewer=> " --prefix "Student=" \
    -o . transcript.vtt
$ head -3 transcript_formatted.txt
> Interviewer | Hello, I am the interviewer. | 00:00:10

Student | Nice. I am the student being interviewed, and I have many things to say. | 00:00:13

Privacy

Speaker names can be replaced using the --rename flag. All other redactions of sensitive and identifiable information must be performed before running this script.

Tip: the auto-generated transcripts can be edited in-situ using the Microsoft Stream app.

Remember to delete the original transcripts after running this script!

Roadmap & contributing

There are some fairly simple additions that would make this more generally useful:

• Handle meetings with >2 participants
• User can configure how names are handled
• Configure the output format, e.g. using a template
• Handle Zoom meetings
• Output to different file formats (realistically, .docx would probably be the most useful to folks.)

Suggestions for improvements are welcome. Contributions even more so! Just open an issue or pull request.