This post originally appeared on the Perficient blog

I don’t know about you, but I really wish there was a way to export managed metadata in SharePoint, especially since SharePoint teases you with the ‘Import Term Set’ option. To get around this I’ve written a little script to export all of the term sets in a term store (easily customizable to just export the term sets in a particular group or just 1 term set if you choose to go that route) to a CSV file that follows the Microsoft formatting convention needed to use the Import Term Set option. It’s not perfect, but it definitely gets the job done. I thought I’d share it with you all to hopefully make someone else’s life a little easier. For information on the formatting of the CSV file for import please see this Technet article.

Code (Powershell)

 Add-PSSnapin "Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell"
 
 function Get-TermSetsCSV() {
     param($SiteUrl, $CSVOutput)
 
     $empty = ""

     $taxonomySite = Get-SPSite -Identity $SiteUrl

     #Connect to Term Store in the Managed Metadata Service Application
     $taxonomySession = Get-SPTaxonomySession -site $taxonomySite
     $taxonomyTermStore =  $taxonomySession.TermStores | Select Name
     $termStore = $taxonomySession.TermStores[$taxonomyTermStore.Name]
 
     foreach ($group in $termStore.Groups)
     {
         foreach($termSet in $group.TermSets)
         {
             $terms = @()

             #The path and file name, in this case I d\TermSet\TermSetName.csv
             $CSVFile = $CSVOutput + '\' + $termSet.Name + '.csv'

             #From Tec The first line of the file must contain 12 items separated by commas
             $firstLine = New-TermLine -TermSetName $termSet.Name -TermSetDescription $empty -LCID $empty -AvailableForTagging "TRUE" -TermDescription $empty -Level1 $empty -Level2 $empty -Level3 $empty -Level4 $empty -Level5 $empty -Level6 $empty -Level7 $empty
             $terms+=$firstLine

             #Now we start to add a line in the file for each term in the term set
             foreach ($term in $termSet.GetAllTerms())
             {

                 $tempTerm = $term
                 $counter = 0
                 $tempTerms = @("","","","","","","")
 
                 #this while loop makes sure you are using the root term then counts how many child terms there are 
                 while (!$tempTerm.IsRoot)
                 {
                     $tempTerm = $tempTerm.Parent
                     $counter = $counter + 1
                 }

                 $start = $counter

                 #this makes sure that any columns that would need to be empty are empty
                 #i.e. if the current term is 3 levels deep, then the 4th, 5th, and 6th level will be empty
                 while ($counter -le 6)
                 {
                     $tempTerms[$counter] = $empty
                     $counter = $counter + 1
                 }

                 #start with the current term
                 $tempTerm = $term

                 #fill in the parent terms of the current term (there should never be children of the current term--the child term will have its own line in the CSV)
                 while ($start -ge 0)
                 {
                     $tempTerms[$start] = $tempTerm.Name
                     $tempTerm = $tempTerm.Parent
                     $start = $start - 1
                 }

                 #create a new line in the CSV file
                 $CSVLine = New-TermLine -TermSetName $empty -TermSetDescription $empty -LCID $empty -AvailableForTagging "TRUE" -TermDescription $empty -Level1 $tempTerms[0] -Level2 $tempTerms[1] -Level3 $tempTerms[2] -Level4 $tempTerms[3] -Level5 $tempTerms[4] -Level6 $tempTerms[5] -Level7 $tempTerms[6]

                 #add the new line
                 $terms+=$CSVLine
             }

             #export all of the terms to a CSV file
             $terms | Export-Csv $CSVFile -notype
         }
     }
     $taxonomySite.dispose()
 }

 #constructor
 function New-TermLine() {
     param($TermSetName, $TermSetDescription, $LCID, $AvailableForTagging, $TermDescription, $Level1, $Level2, $Level3, $Level4, $Level5, $Level6, $Level7)
 
     $term = New-Object PSObject

     $term | Add-Member -Name "TermSetName" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $TermSetName
     $term | Add-Member -Name "TermSetDescription" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $TermSetDescription
     $term | Add-Member -Name "LCID" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $LCID
     $term | Add-Member -Name "AvailableForTagging" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $AvailableForTagging
     $term | Add-Member -Name "TermDescription" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $TermDescription
     $term | Add-Member -Name "Level1" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $Level1
     $term | Add-Member -Name "Level2" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $Level2
     $term | Add-Member -Name "Level3" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $Level3
     $term | Add-Member -Name "Level4" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $Level4
     $term | Add-Member -Name "Level5" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $Level5
     $term | Add-Member -Name "Level6" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $Level6
     $term | Add-Member -Name "Level7" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $Level7
 
     return $term
 }
 
 Get-TermSetsCSV -SiteUrl "Your Site URL" -CSVOutput "C:\TermSet"