Locate orphaned Termstore Terms

Summary

Once in a while, you might see a Managed Metadata column in a SharePoint list or library that has a value that is not in the Termstore. This script will help you locate the orphaned terms.

Rather than rely on you Admin account to have access to all sites, I will recommend you to use either a managed identity or a service principal to run this script.

• PnP PowerShell

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#sample showing one way to find managed metadata fields where the values doesn't exists anymore because the term has been deleted

#connect to the term store
$spAdminUrl = "https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com"

$SPAdminConn = Connect-PnPOnline -Url $spAdminUrl -Interactive -ReturnConnection


function RecursiveGetTerms($term)
{
    if($term.Terms.Count -gt 0)
    {
        foreach($childTerm in $term.Terms)
        {
            $allTerms.Add($childTerm) | Out-Null
            RecursiveGetTerms $childTerm 
        }
    }
    
}
#extract all terms
$allTerms =  New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList 
$termGroups = Get-PnPTermGroup -Connection $SPAdminConn
foreach($termGroup in $termGroups)
{
    $termSets = Get-PnPTermSet -TermGroup $termGroup -Connection $SPAdminConn
    foreach($termSet in $termSets)
    {
        Write-Host "Processing $($termSet.Name)"
        $terms = Get-PnPTerm -TermSet $termSet -TermGroup $termGroup -Connection $SPAdminConn -IncludeChildTerms -IncludeDeprecated 
        foreach($term in $terms)
        {
            $allTerms.Add($term) | Out-Null
            RecursiveGetTerms $term 
            
        }
    }
}
#get all hits on owstaxidmetadataalltagsinfo
$query = "owstaxidmetadataalltagsinfo:*"
$hits = Invoke-PnPSearchQuery -Connection $SPAdminConn -Query $query -All -SelectProperties "owstaxidmetadataalltagsinfo"
foreach($hit in $hits.ResultRows)
{
    $owstaxidmetadataalltagsinfos = $hit["owstaxidmetadataalltagsinfo"]
    $owstaxidmetadataalltagsinfos = $owstaxidmetadataalltagsinfos.Split(";")
    foreach($metadata in $owstaxidmetadataalltagsinfos)
    {
        $parts = $metadata.Split("|")
        $metadataGuid = $parts[1]
        $metadataGuid = $metadataGuid.Replace("#0","")
        if($metadataGuid.IndexOf("ffffffff") -gt -1) # there are some metadata fields that are not managed metadata
        {
            continue
        }
        $term = $allTerms | Where-Object { $_.Id -eq $metadataGuid }
            
        if($term -eq $null)
        {
            Write-Host "Term not found for $metadata"
        }
        else {
            Write-Host "Term found for $metadata at $($term.Name)"
        }
    }
    
}

Check out the PnP PowerShell to learn more at: https://aka.ms/pnp/powershell

The way you login into PnP PowerShell has changed please read PnP Management Shell EntraID app is deleted : what should I do ?

Contributors

Author(s)
Kasper Larsen

Disclaimer

THESE SAMPLES ARE PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT.