Check if SharePoint Feature is Active Before Enabling with PnP PowerShell

October 31, 2025

When automating SharePoint site configurations with PnP PowerShell, it’s essential to check whether a feature is already active before attempting to enable it. This prevents unnecessary errors, improves script performance, and ensures idempotent operations. This guide demonstrates best practices for checking feature status and conditionally enabling features in SharePoint Online.

Why Check Feature Status First?
Understanding SharePoint Features
Prerequisites
Basic Feature Check Pattern
References

Why Check Feature Status First?

Checking if a feature is already active before enabling it provides several important benefits:

Key Benefits

✅ Avoid Errors: Prevents script failures when features are already enabled
✅ Improve Performance: Skips unnecessary operations, reducing execution time
✅ Idempotent Scripts: Scripts can be run multiple times safely with consistent results
✅ Better Logging: Provides clear status information about what actions were taken
✅ Graceful Handling: Allows for conditional logic based on feature state
✅ Reduced API Calls: Minimizes unnecessary calls to SharePoint APIs

Common Scenarios

Site provisioning scripts that may run multiple times
Deployment pipelines where feature state is uncertain
Migration scripts that need to ensure specific features are enabled
Configuration validation across multiple sites
Bulk operations on multiple site collections

Understanding SharePoint Features

SharePoint features are units of functionality that can be activated or deactivated at various scopes.

Feature Scopes

Scope	Description	Example
Site Collection	Applies to entire site collection	Publishing features
Web	Applies to individual site/web	Document sets

Feature Properties

DefinitionId: Unique GUID identifying the feature
DisplayName: Human-readable name
Scope: Where the feature applies (Site or Web)
IsActivated: Current activation status

Prerequisites

Before working with SharePoint features, ensure you have:

PnP PowerShell Module installed:

Install-Module -Name PnP.PowerShell -Scope CurrentUser

Appropriate Permissions:
- Site Collection Administrator (for Site-scoped features)
- Site Owner (for Web-scoped features)
Feature GUID: The unique identifier for the feature you want to manage

Basic Feature Check Pattern

Here’s the fundamental pattern for checking and enabling features safely.

Simple Feature Check

# Define variables
$siteUrl = "https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/YourSite"
$clientId = "xxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx"
$featureId = "73ef14b1-13a9-416b-a9b5-ececa2b0604c" # Taxonomy Feature

# Connect to SharePoint
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $siteUrl -ClientId $clientId -Interactive

# Check if feature is active
$feature = Get-PnPFeature -Identity $featureId -Scope Site

if (!$feature.DefinitionId) {
    # Feature is not active, enable it
    Write-Host "Enabling feature..." -ForegroundColor Yellow
    Enable-PnPFeature -Identity $featureId -Scope Site -Force
    Write-Host "Feature enabled successfully!" -ForegroundColor Green
}
else {
    Write-Host "Feature is already active. Skipping..." -ForegroundColor Cyan
}

Understanding the Check

The key line is:

if (!$feature.DefinitionId)

Why this works:

When a feature is active, Get-PnPFeature returns an object with a DefinitionId property
When a feature is not active, the returned object has a null or empty DefinitionId
The ! operator checks if the value is null/empty (feature not active)

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