When Importing a list which contain Managed Metadata columns will associate the Managed Metadata columns with the related term group

Question

I am facing this inconsistency inside my sharepoint 2013 on-premises farms, when Importing a Pages library inside different farms. as follow:-

1. Now i have 3 farms. our live serve + our test server + our customer live server.

2. all these 3 farms are of type sharepoint on-premises enterprise 2013 server.

3. now inside our live server we have an enterprise wiki site collection, and i have exported the Pages library using this command:-

   Export-SPWeb -Identity "http://LIVEservername/wiki/" -ItemUrl "Pages" -Path "c:\1.cmp" -CompressionSize 1000 -IncludeVersions All -IncludeUserSecurity -Force –Verbose

4. now the Pages library contain 5 managed metadata columns which are linked to 5 term sets.

5. now inside the 3 farms, i have created the same term structure inside the managed metadata service. where i used the same names for the term group, the term sets and the terms.

6. now the confusion i got is that when i import the the Pages library inside our test farm, the managed metadata columns got linked to the related term sets.. so i thought that the import operation is smart enough to link the managed metadata site columns with the terms set which have the same name as in the source farm (our live farm).

7. but when i import the pages list inside our customer farm, the manged metadata columns were not associated with any term sets.. although i used the same import command + as i mentioned i have used the same names for the term sets and for the term group and for the terms.

   Import-SPWeb http://farmB/**** –Path "c:\1.cmp" -IncludeUserSecurity –Verbose

so can anyone adivce, what govern the import behavioure in respect to associating the managed metadata columns with the term sets ???

Answer 1

In the new farm, the term sets have new unique identifier which the managed metadata columns reference in Pages Library in your customer server. Even though the term sets have the same name as the term sets in your live server, the managed metadata column in the imported Pages library cannot associate with the new term set.

For your test server, check whether the term sets’ unique identifier is the same as that the managed metadata columns used.

For your customer server, I recommend you using PowerShell commend to update the term sets in the Pages library.

Here is a demo for your reference