SharePoint 2010 Proxy Managed Metadata Service Error - Pre-import check - Field internal name 'xxxx' conflict

Question

I wanted to bounce off ideas on an issue I am having. I feel I am reaching the end of my rope. We have SharePoint 2010 Standard.

We have multiple Site Collections that subscribe to the main HUB. All site collections but one is having a strange issue.

1. Currently there are no errors in the content type service application error log.
2. All site collections but this one is getting updates from the hub.
3. When you go into the Content Type Publishing Hubs within the Site Collection, the first thing I see is that the Subscribed Content is not up to date.
   a. The first log errors we see are within the Content Type publishing error log.

Error: Proxy Managed Metadata Service Error - Pre-import check - Field internal name 'xxxx' conflict

1. Besides not getting the new CT's that have been added (not changed but new all together), the erroring items are columns that are associated with the CT. It is as if there is a disconnect with some of the fields associated as a column to the CT. None of these have been changed.
2. Of course we receive a correlation ID error when attempting to add the CT to any library etc.

What I have done to troubleshoot this (and nothing has fixed the issue):

1. Deleted the library template using any of the CT that has issues within the site collection
2. Ran script to find any libraries using CT and removed the CT and reassigned generic CT to items. Pulled up Designer looking for possible hidden column that should have been deleted (if it did not). It deleted properly. Reference: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/18196b62-e8f1-44af-b638-7a6209fd3a92/sp2010-content-type-hub-change-a-field-type-conflict-on-publishing
3. Deleted all references to the CT from all level of recycle bins (user and admin view).
4. Attempted to delete the columns erroring from the site collection - it says they are in use so we ran a script checking for any in the site collection and there are NONE in use. Can not even go into the item without it erroring to see the "delete/remove" button.
5. Attempted to delete the CT from the site collection (says it is in use which is in relation to the column showing that error).
6. Went into site collection and checked the box to receive newly published items. Went to hub and went into the columns associated with CT in question, no error, they act normal (again, all other site collections are working perfectly); republished item, re-ran jobs. No change to site collection. (did this multiple times after each major change completed)

So what to do?

I shouldn't have to delete the CT from the Hub, it isn't the CT Hub that is having the issue it is the site collection.

Is there something we could do with the database of that site collection? Could it be the database itself that has corrupt content?

Right now the next step is we are copying the entire site collection to a different environment with a different DB to see if we can get it to work and sync properly.

I wonder if it would be worth creating a new site collection and importing the team sites in and starting from a type of scratch with this one? This would be a lot of crazy work, and new links for all users involved.

Anyway, I hope I can get some answers here. Thanks

Answer 1

I just ran into this issue. While watching the SharePoint logs I found that the field in question was added locally to the site columns instead of added using the content type hub. So when trying to update the content type there was an error due to two columns with the same name (the one at the content type hub and the one local).

The fix was to delete the column from the site collection and republish the content type.