Managed Metadata - Not all term sets displaying correctly in Document Library

Question

We are using SharePoint Online.

There is a Subsite with a Document Library, it uses some managed metadata column types.
One of the managed metadata columns is Document Type, this had a term set with seven available terms to choose.

I recently updated the term set by adding an additional term (Records), and then changed the Default Label for all of the terms by adding a number in front just for better sorting, 1-8

My issue is that only 6 of the updated terms are being displayed correctly with their respective number in the Document Type column, but 2 terms are not applying the change and are missing the number. I've tried re-labelling to two incorrect terms to something else as well but it won't update the change from the original

Though when I check the document properties it does show the correct Document Type label with the numbers in front.
I tried leaving the issue over the weekend to see if it just needed time to sync, but is still incorrect.

I'm not sure why only two of the labels in the term set don't display correctly in any of the Document Library views, yet the document type is correct in the document properties.

Answer 1

Hi @Davino1020 ,

As per my experience, you may find that the synchronization between the Term Store and the managed metadata fields in a list or library is not always as fast as you wish or even seems to not work at all. The reason for this is that there is a timer job called Taxonomy Update Scheduler, which handles the synchronization.

So, if we update the Term Store, we must take into account that it can take up to 24 hours for the Taxonomy Update Scheduler timer job to be triggered and synchronize the managed metadata fields. If after 24 hours checking the managed metadata fields haven’t sync, we should be concerned. Currently, in SharePoint Online, there is no way to force the timer job execution or any kind of workaround, since we don’t have control of this timer job which is managed by Microsoft.

You mentioned that you have waited for a weekend and they are still not been updated. I think there may be something wrong with that timer job in the backend. You can raise a service request with Microsoft by accessing Microsoft 365 admin center -> Support -> New service request.

As an alternative, If you don't mind deleting the Document Type column you are using, you can delete it, recreate a new one and use the updated term sets to assign properties to those items. Considering that there are only about 20 files in this library, I think this will not be very time consuming.

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