O365 - Delete Managed Metadata Terms using CSOM in PowerShell from a CSV file
The second blog post in a series of blog posts I am going to publish 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 take input values from a CSV file and delete Managed Metadata Terms within a target Term Set in SharePoint Online. The script assumes that you will specify a path to a CSV file that contains the names of the Terms you wish to delete and then loops through each line of the CSV file and deletes terms within the Term Set. I have attached a sample CSV file to this blog post.
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 that contains the Term Set you wish to delete the terms from and $TermSetName which is the name of the target Term Set that contains the terms you wish to delete.
$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 the path to the CSV file that contains the names of the terms you wish to delete>"
#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 "TermNamesToDelete" column of the CSV file, delete the Term from the Term Set.
$TermToDelete = $Terms | Where {$_.Name -eq $line.TermNamesToDelete}
$Context.Load($TermToDelete)
$Context.ExecuteQuery()
$TermToDelete.DeleteObject()
$Context.Load($Terms)
$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 deleted from the Term Set!" -ForegroundColor Green
}