Teams: "what did I miss?" — catching up mid-meeting

Joining a meeting fifteen minutes late used to mean a whispered "can someone catch me up" in the chat, or sitting through the recording afterwards to figure out what happened. Copilot's What did I miss? prompt replaces both.

Where to find it

Join the meeting, open the Copilot icon in the meeting toolbar, and either use the suggested prompt (Teams often surfaces "Catch me up" automatically when you join after the meeting has started) or type "What did I miss?" yourself. Copilot answers immediately, before the meeting has ended, using the transcript of what's been said so far.

What it gives you

A short summary of the discussion up to the point you joined — the topics covered, decisions made, and who said what, generally organised so you can skim it in a few seconds and rejoin the conversation with context. You can follow up with more specific questions — "did anyone mention the budget?" — and Copilot answers from the same live transcript.

What it needs

Transcription must be running in the meeting. In most tenant configurations the organiser or a presenter starts it (a banner usually confirms it's on, and in many regions attendees are notified). If transcription hasn't been started, there's nothing for Copilot to summarise and the prompt won't produce a meaningful answer. A Microsoft 365 Copilot licence is required, and it follows the same meeting-recording and transcription policies IT has set for the tenant — some organisations require attendee consent or restrict transcription in certain meeting types.

How it differs from the full recap

This is a live, in-the-moment answer to "what happened before I joined," pulled from the transcript as it exists at that moment. It's not the same as the intelligent recap that appears after the meeting ends, which adds AI-generated chapters, speaker attribution across the whole meeting, and action items — see Copilot in Teams meetings: recap and action items for that. What did I miss is the quick version for someone still in the meeting; recap is the fuller version for afterwards.

A habit worth building

The prompt is easy to forget in the moment — most people default to a whispered "what did I miss" to whoever's nearest instead. It's worth making it a habit specifically for recurring meetings you're often late to, since the summary is faster and more complete than a colleague's rushed recap, and it doesn't cost the person next to you their attention either.

Where it falls short

If transcription started late (or was never turned on), the summary only covers what's actually in the transcript — it can't reconstruct the first five minutes if transcription began at minute six. Side conversations that happened off the shared audio (a private chat between two attendees, a side call) aren't captured. And like any AI summary of speech, names can occasionally be misattributed in a large meeting with many similar-sounding voices — treat it as a fast orientation, not a verbatim record.