How to Merge Terms in SharePoint Term Store

SharePoint Term Store happens to be one of my favorite SharePoint features. If you follow my blog, you probably already know I am a huge fan of metadata. However, there are different ways to create metadata in SharePoint. Doing so using the Term Store functionality allows you to centralize all your company metadata in one place. This assures the same naming convention, avoids duplication, and dramatically improves your information architecture.

However, for Term Store to be pristine and accurate, you need to maintain it once in a while. Things constantly change, and you might need to clean up some old metadata. Sometimes, it means the deletion and renaming of some of the terms. There might also be situations when you must combine 2 terms into 1. Examples could be metadata terms for client companies that are being merged, departments that are being consolidated, etc. So, in this article, I want to explain how to merge the terms properly in SharePoint.

Scenario

1. For this article/example, I have a term set defined within the Term Store for Departments with a list of company departments.
2. Sales and Marketing are listed as two different departments (terms).
3. Due to the company’s recent restructuring, the Marketing Department has been integrated into the Sales Department.
4. So, we need to merge the Marketing term with the Sales Term.
5. As a result of this, I also need to have the documents already tagged with the Marketing label to be renamed to the Sales label.

How to Merge Terms in SharePoint Term Store

Let’s see how this works.

1. To merge one term into another term, go ahead and click three dots next to the term, then select Merge term.
2. On the next screen, you would need to choose the term to merge with. Note the text about the Synonyms appearing on top of the screen. If you provided synonyms or language translations for a term being merged, all that information will become available within the new term! Click on the term you want to merge with.
3. After you select the term to merge with, click the Merge button.
4. After a few seconds, you will see the term being merged disappear from the term set. That’s pretty much it – the term has been merged!

Important notes about Managed Metadata Term Merge

• Just like with renaming a term, it might take up to 24 hours for the change to take effect at the list or library level where the term set was used. So be patient!
• Terms can be merged among different Term Groups and Term Sets.
• You can only merge Terms themselves. You can’t merge entire Term Sets.
• As mentioned above, if your merged term contains any synonyms or translations, they will become available within the new term. Below are screenshots of the synonyms I had defined for the Marketing Term before and after it was merged.