O365 - Deprecate Managed Metadata Terms from a CSV file using CSOM in PowerShell

The ninth post in a series of blog posts that walk through the process of performing configuration tasks against the Managed Metadata Term Store in O365 using CSOM in PowerShell. These posts will explain how to use a CSV file to provide the input values for the scripts however the logic within the scripts can be used to perform the same tasks without using a CSV file with minimal effort.

The example PowerShell script below can be used to deprecate Managed Metadata Terms within a SharePoint Online Term Store in a target Office 365 tenant. The script assumes the names of the terms you wish to deprecate are supplied in a CSV file.

It requires five variables to be updated - $User which is the tenant admin, $TenantURL which is the URL for the SharePoint Admin Center, $Site which is a valid URL of any SharePoint Site Collection that exists within the tenant, $GroupName which is the name of the Term Group you wish to connect to and $TermSetName which is the name of the Term Set that contains the terms you wish to deprecate.

$User = "<Tenant Admin>"

$TenantURL = "<URL of SharePoint Admin Center>"

$Site = "<URL of Site Collection that exists in the tenant>"

$GroupName = "<Term Group Name that contains the target Term Set>"

$TermSetName = "<Target Term Set Name>"

 

#Add references to SharePoint client assemblies and authenticate to Office 365 site - required for CSOM

Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll"

Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll"

Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Taxonomy.dll"

$Password = Read-Host -Prompt "Please enter your password" -AsSecureString

try

{

 

#Bind to the Managed Metadata Service within the target instance of SPO

$Context = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($Site)

$Creds = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($User,$Password)

$Context.Credentials = $Creds

$MMS = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Taxonomy.TaxonomySession]::GetTaxonomySession($Context)

$Context.Load($MMS)

$Context.ExecuteQuery()

 

#Retrieve all of the Term Stores from the Managed Metadata Service

$TermStores = $MMS.TermStores

$Context.Load($TermStores)

$Context.ExecuteQuery()

 

#Bind to the Term Store you want to perform configurations against

$TermStore = $TermStores[0]

$Context.Load($TermStore)

$Context.ExecuteQuery()

 

#Bind to the Term Group you want to perform configurations against

$Group = $TermStore.Groups.GetByName($GroupName)

$Context.Load($Group)

$Context.ExecuteQuery()

 

#Bind to Term Set you want to perform configurations against

$TermSet = $Group.TermSets.GetByName($TermSetName)

$Context.Load($TermSet)

$Context.ExecuteQuery()

 

#Bind to Terms within the Term Set

$Terms = $TermSet.Terms

$Context.Load($Terms)

$Context.ExecuteQuery()

 

#Specify path to CSV input file that contains;

#The names of the Terms within the Term Set to delete

$path = "Specify path to CSV file"

 

#Import and load the CSV input file into the PowerShell Session

$csv = import-csv -path $path

 

#Process entries in the CSV

foreach($line in $csv){

 

 

#For every Term within the Term Set that matches the name of one of the Terms in the "TermNamesToDeprecate" column of the CSV file, deprecate the Term from the Term Set.

$TermToDeprecate = $Terms | Where {$_.Name -eq $line.TermNamesToDeprecate}

$Context.Load($TermToDeprecate)

$Context.ExecuteQuery()

 

$TermToDeprecate.Deprecate($True)

$context.ExecuteQuery()

 

}

}

 

catch

{

    write-host "Caught an exception:" -ForegroundColor Red

    write-host "Exception Type: $($_.Exception.GetType().FullName)" -ForegroundColor Red

    write-host "Exception Message: $($_.Exception.Message)" -ForegroundColor Red

}

finally

{

    write-host ""

    write-host "Terms have been successfully deprecated from the Term Set!" -ForegroundColor Green

}