Enabling the TaxonomyFieldAdded feature to fix ManagedMetadata Column errors

We’re working on a solution at the moment that uses a custom site definition. For various reasons we stated with the Blank Site definition and worked from there. Our customisations include content types using custom columns that link to managed metadata term sets. We create all those through features – great! The tricky bit came when after deployment our managed metadata columns were greyed out. Examining the column we say an error telling us that the feature supporting the functionality was not activated.

What feature?

After quite a bit of hunting it turns out that there is a site collection feature called TaxonomyFieldAdded (ID 73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b0604c) that is needed to allow the column to connect to the term set. The problem is that it’s a hidden feature so you can’t switch it on through the web site. Obviously we can enable it programmatically, but for anybody who has this problem (can’t connect a custom column to a term set) here is some simple PowerShell to enable it:

get-spfeature | where {$_Id –eq “73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b0604c”} | enable-spfeature –url <site collection url>