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Term Set

A term set in SharePoint is a collection of related terms stored in the Term Store and used for consistent tagging through managed metadata. The hierarchy is simple: term groups contain term sets, and term sets contain the individual terms users apply to content. A Departments term set, for example, holds one official term per department so every site tags content with the same values. Term sets are the backbone of enterprise taxonomy in SharePoint and Microsoft 365.
Related Features
Enterprise Keywords, Term Group, Term Store

Common Use Cases

  • Department taxonomies: one official list of departments that every site references for tagging
  • Document classification: term sets for document types, disciplines, or practice areas applied through managed metadata columns
  • Geography and locations: hierarchical term sets for regions, countries, and offices that mirror how the business is organized
  • Products and services: a managed catalog of offerings so content about each product is tagged identically
  • Project and client tags: controlled lists that keep project or client names consistent across sites
  • Search refinement: consistent terms power refiners and filters that work the same way across the whole tenant

Benefits

  • One vocabulary everywhere: terms are defined centrally, so Finance is never tagged as Fin, finance, and Accounting in different lists
  • Hierarchy built in: terms can nest up to seven levels deep, modeling structures like region, country, and city
  • Central updates: rename a term once and every place it is used reflects the new label
  • Synonyms supported: alternate labels help users find the right term even when they type a different word
  • Controlled growth: the submission policy decides whether users can add terms or only designated people can
  • Reuse across columns: many managed metadata columns across many sites can all bind to the same term set

How It Works

  • Lives in the Term Store: term sets sit inside term groups, which provide the security boundary around them
  • Bound to columns: a managed metadata column points at a term set, and users pick values from its terms
  • Global or local: tenant level term sets are available everywhere, while site collection term sets are scoped to one site collection
  • Open or closed: a closed term set only accepts terms from people with edit permission, while an open term set lets users add new terms while tagging
  • Terms can be reused: a term can be reused or pinned into other term sets so shared concepts stay synchronized
  • Deprecation instead of deletion: terms can be deprecated so they stop being offered for new tagging without disturbing content already tagged

Limits and Nuances

  • Tenant scale limits: SharePoint supports up to 1,000 global term sets and 1 million total terms in the term store
  • Permissions live at the group: the ability to manage a term set comes from being a contributor or group manager on its term group, or a term store administrator
  • Owner is informational: the owner, contact, and stakeholders fields document responsibility but grant no rights by themselves
  • Seven levels deep: term hierarchies support up to seven levels of nested terms
  • Local stays local: a site collection level term set is not visible to other site collections, so plan shared taxonomy at the tenant level
  • Deprecated terms persist: content tagged with a deprecated term keeps its tag; the term simply stops being offered for new use

Common Questions About Term Sets

What is the difference between a term set and a term group?

A term group is the container and security boundary, while a term set is the actual vocabulary inside it. The Term Store holds term groups, each term group holds term sets, and each term set holds the terms users apply to content. Permissions are assigned at the group level, so whoever contributes to a group can manage all of its term sets.

What does an open or closed term set mean?

The submission policy controls who can add terms. A closed term set accepts new terms only from people with permission to update managed metadata, which keeps official taxonomies stable. An open term set lets any user add a term while filling in a managed metadata column, which suits folksonomy style vocabularies that grow organically. Closed is the usual choice for governed taxonomies.

How many terms can a term set or term store hold?

SharePoint supports up to 1,000 global term sets and 1,000 global term groups per tenant, and the term store holds up to 1 million total terms across global and site level taxonomies. Within a term set, terms can be organized in a hierarchy up to seven levels deep. Those ceilings are generous enough that well planned taxonomies rarely approach them.

Who can manage a term set?

Management rights come from the term group: group managers and contributors on the group can create and manage the term sets inside it, and term store administrators can manage everything. The owner, contact, and stakeholders fields on a term set are informational, recording who is responsible and who to notify before major changes, but they grant no permissions by themselves.

Can a term set be limited to a single site?

Yes. Alongside global term sets that serve the whole tenant, SharePoint supports site collection level term sets that are visible only within one site collection. They are useful for vocabularies that genuinely belong to a single site, such as a project specific category list. Anything multiple sites should share belongs in a global term set instead.

Who can design term sets for my organization’s taxonomy?

Good term sets reflect how your business actually talks about its work, which takes discovery as much as configuration. Greg Zelfond, the SharePoint consultant behind LookBook 365, designs taxonomies and builds the term sets, managed metadata columns, and tagging experiences entirely out of the box, so the result is supportable by your own team from day one.