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SharePoint Managed Metadata Import Files

Written by

Jonathan Ralton

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Time to Read:

1–2 minutes

SharePoint allows you to import term sets using a specifically formatted CSV file. This is quite helpful to set up large quantities of terms, with inheritance, quickly. It also allows for planning of your term set in spreadsheet format.

A shortcoming of this method is the inability to specify synonyms (alternate spellings, abbreviations, etc.) for any of your terms. Those must be manually entered on each term after importing. Also, once you import a term set, you can not just replace it with a subsequent import. The term set must be deleted and re-established via a subsequent import. Deleting the term set severs all connections from any columns, so those will all need to be re-established after the replacement term set is created.

Unfortunately, SharePoint does not provide a method for you to export a term set through the user interface, which means that your managed metadata hierarchies are trapped in the farm you set them up in. Unless… you either write custom code, employ a third party tool such as MetaVis Term Store Manager or MetaVis Architect Suite, or try out a CodePlex solution such as SolidQ Managed Metadata Exporter or SharePoint Managed Metadata Navigator.

I frequently need access to standard lists in the Term Store. I’ll be publishing several import files that I use, and will periodically update this post with links to the individual posts for each file here:

Canonical Terms

  1. Currency (03/07/2014)
  2. Geographical Location (03/07/2014)
  3. Language (03/07/2014)
  4. Locale (03/07/2014)
  5. Time Zone (02/28/2014)

Common Entities

  1. Airlines (03/21/2014)
  2. Parcel Carriers (03/17/2014)
  3. Postal Carriers (03/17/2014)
  4. Logistics Companies (03/19/2014)
  5. Trucking Companies (03/19/2014)

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Comments

2 responses to “SharePoint Managed Metadata Import Files”

  1. Barry Schneider Avatar
    Barry Schneider

    What do you mean by re-established in this statement – “so those will all need to be re-established after the replacement term set is created.”

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  2. Jonathan Ralton Avatar
    Jonathan Ralton

    Hi Barry,
    I appreciate your question. I’ll try to address it as best I can.
    Say you’ve imported a term set named ‘Customers’ previously, and have pointed a managed metadata column named ‘Customer’ to that term set, whether it be a site column or a list/library column.
    Your list of customers has changed enough to warrant replacing the term set instead of manually creating, updating, and/or deleting individual terms. Ignoring data loss concerns, of course, you should delete the existing ‘Customers’ term set before you re-import it. Otherwise, SharePoint will import your file and create a new term set alongside your old one named ‘Customers1’. It will not allow you to import the file in place of the existing term set.
    Your ‘Customer’ column must be pointed to the replacement term set in order to be able to select terms from it. Otherwise, when a user creates or updates a new item that uses the ‘Customer’ column, the will not be presented with any customers to select from. SharePoint will not just recognize that you’ve imported a term set with the same name as a previous one and re-establish the links to columns that used it for you; you must do this yourself. This is because managed metadata columns and their terms are not referenced by name; they are referenced by GUID in the background. When you re-import the ‘Customers’ term set, it will be assigned a new GUID and all the terms within it will also be assigned new GUIDs.
    Besides the technical challenge around this, you’ll want to carefully consider the consequences of deleting and replacing a term set if content has been tagged with terms within it.

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