How do I add live transcription or manual closed-captioning to a Zoom meeting?

During a Zoom meeting there are three ways the host can offer live captions of the spoken text to participants:

  1. By enabling automatic transcription with closed caption generation
  2. By designating another participant to type closed captions
  3. By manually typing closed captions yourself

These instructions step you through these three options —

Option 1 - Enable automatic transcription with closed caption generation

In a web browser log into your Tufts Zoom account with single-sign on (SSO)

Go to https://tufts.zoom.us and choose "Sign in"

See: How do I sign into my Tufts Zoom account on the web?

In the Zoom account navigation panel, choose Settings.

At the top of the page click  the "Meeting" tab to view meeting settings

Scroll down to "Closed captioning"

If you have not changed this setting, you will see it is set to "on" because closed captioning is enabled on all Tufts Zoom meetings by default.

If this setting is off, and you want live automatic transcription or manual closed-captioning, turn it back "on".

If you wanted to disable closed-captioning on all your Zoom meetings, you would toggle this setting to "off".

In the "Closed-captioning" settings, check  the "Enable live transcription..." checkbox, and click "Save"

This will enable the option for live automatic transcription for any meeting you host. Once this feature is enabled, you must still manually start the service in the meeting itself.

When you host a Zoom meeting click "CC Live Transcript" in the toolbar

For live, automatic transcription and closed caption generation choose "Enable Auto-Transcription"

Option 2 - Designate another participant to type closed captions by choosing "Assign a participant to type" in the "CC Live Transcript" window, and choosing someone from the Participants list

Option 3 - Manually type closed captions yourself by choosing "I will type" in the "CC Live Transcript" window

For in-depth information about live automatic transcription and close-captioning see the Zoom help guide: Getting Started with Closed Captioning.

To learn how to access the transcript of a Zoom meeting, see: How can I access and share transcripts of Zoom recordings?