For projects that leverage externally maintained vocabularies, the ideal situation is to be able to reference those external terms rather than attempting to import the entire vocabulary into Drupal, particularly if the vocabulary is frequently updated. Unfortunately, this is an area where there hasn't been a lot of development work.
If you want to export taxonomy terms specifically to import them into another Drupal site, you should use Taxonomy Manager (if you need it for other pieces of its functionality) or Taxonomy CSV import/export (tutorial here). If you want to just export the data stored in a taxonomy as a CSV file (e.g.
If you already use the Taxonomy Manager module, it’s simplest to use the export and import capabilities included with that module. If you don’t need Taxonomy Manager, Taxonomy CSV import/export provides just that piece of functionality.
Install and enable the module. After you've enabled it, a helpful message appears that shows you where to go to configure the module:
Sometimes it can be useful to override the standard taxonomy display for a particular vocabulary (even if you've customized the standard taxonomy display by enabling and editing the "Taxonomy term" view.
To do that, install and enable the Taxonomy Display module. Go to Structure > Taxonomy > [Pick a vocabulary] > Manage display and in the "Custom display settings" area, check the box next to "Taxonomy term page".
