Recently I was building up a site from a blank template and wanted to use some of the Metadata navigation features in SharePoint 2010, even though I had enabled the metadata navigation feature I was still getting the message “The required feature is not enabled for this column type.”, even after deactivating and activating it again hoping to “kick-start” the darn thing.

 

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Turns out there are 2 features that need to be enabled to get everything to play nicely.  So opening powershell you need to run the following 2 commandlets:

Enable-SPFeature -id "73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" -Url <Site-URL>
Enable-SPFeature -id "7201D6A4-A5D3-49A1-8C19-19C4BAC6E668" -Url <Site-URL>

The first commandlet is what allows the use of managed metadata columns for lists and libraries (and I can’t find it anywhere in the UI!)  the second one is the one that adds the navigation options for metadata (which is the feature I kept flipping on and off)  So while I was enabling the use of metadata for navigation, I was not allowing the library to actually use any metadata. 

While it would be nice if these features had nice and friendly display names rather than the GUIDs we all seem to know and love, at least those of us with a bit of understanding on how SharePoint works can at the very least go to “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES” and pick and choose which feature we need.

Now, as to why the first feature was not actually activated, that’s where it gets interesting.  After looking at the contents of the TaxonomyFieldAdded Feature itself and the Feature that staples it to most site definitions the answer to this question becomes a matter of SCOPE. As a Site scoped feature, this feature is only activated when creating a top level site for a new site collection. Since I had created a blank site as my top level site as I was building out a specific web application that I wanted as a separate URL for to house only a few items, all of the nice “bits” that go with most of the site template were not activated.  As I was using the STS#1 template, guess what’s missing from this list?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<!– Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. –>

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="GLOBAL" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="STS#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="STS#2" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="MPS#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="MPS#1" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="MPS#2" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="MPS#3" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="MPS#4" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="WIKI#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="BLOG#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SGS#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="BDR#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="OFFILE#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="OFFILE#1" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SPS#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SPSPERS#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SPSMSITE#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SPSNEWS#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SPSNHOME#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SPSSITES#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SPSREPORTCENTER#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SPSPORTAL#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="SRCHCEN#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="PROFILES#0" />

<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" TemplateName="CMSPUBLISHING#0" />

</Elements>

Guess the golden rule here is don’t ever use a blank site (STS#1) for the root of a site collection unless you really mean that you want a no-features added site and site collection.  You think I would have learned my lesson from when I had problems with List Templates are not Available on the Site.