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General SharePoint topics

The term store may be unavailable

As an Auckland, New Zealand based SharePoint Consultant I often find myself updating terms using the Term Store Management Tool.  Recently, I came across the following error message

 

"This operation cannot be completed.  The term store may be unavailable."

 

Initially I thought it was a connection error, so I waited a few hours and tried again.  Alas I was rewarded with the same error message.

 

After some detective work I discovered, that the error was in fact my fault.  When you add an Other Label that is the same as your Default Label you will get the error message.  In the following example I added Logos in the Other Labels field, when it was already added in the Default Label field.

Term-Store-Unavailable-1.jpg

You will also get this error message if you add an Other Label that is already set as an Other Label.  In the following example I added Logos as an Other Label, when Logos was already in the Other Labels list.

 Term-Store-Unavailable-2.jpg

So the fix is to check that you haven't entered the same term twice.  Hopefully, this will save you some time and perhaps Microsoft will update their error message to be a little more descriptive in a future release.​ ​

Update November 2015: This issue has now been resolved in Office 365. Though it may well still appear in an on-premise installation. ​



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