Import Terms to SharePoint Taxonomy to Save Time, Money

Why waste a bunch of time editing new terms in your SharePoint taxonomy when it's so easy to import them using Excel?

It’s much easier to import terms into SharePoint 2010 term store than to create them within the Term Store Management tool. Since you can use Microsoft Excel to do the work, your schemas can be shared with business colleagues, edited, corrected, and then uploaded into a term set. But, the term store doesn’t let you import terms into an existing term set. It will only allow you to create a new term set. Here’s a quick workaround to get those terms into a term set from an Excel file. Watch the video on our You Tube channel here or read on:

1. Download the “sample import file” from the Managed Metadata Service Properties tab
2. Modify the spreadsheet with your new terms. You really only have to change the Term Set Name, Term Description (this will save you loads of time to do it in Excel) and your Levels (1, 2, 3, etc.).
3. Click on the Term Group where the new Term Set will live
4. Use the dropdown menu to Import Term Set
5. Browse to your Excel file and import it
6. Open the new term set
7. Perform a “Move Term” operation on all terms (and their children) into the existing destination term set
8. Delete the (now) empty term set you imported

You're done. The term you created is where it should be within the existing term set, and you saved a bunch of time creating them one-by-one.

First, download and modify the Excel spreadsheet and import into the correct term group

The new term set is imported, but you only want to use the new term ("QA Skills")

Now move the new term to the desired location in the existing term set ("QA Skills" term to "Skills" term set)

Delete the now-empty term set you imported

And the new term (QA Skills) and its children are located where they should be