Script for Assigning Paragraph Styles to text with similar settings

Question

I'm looking for a script or some way to easily assign different paragraph styles to hundreds of text boxes inside a document all based on the format of the text. All of the text is identical in format, but on different pages. Obviously, I could just go and create styles based on the first page's text and then go and assign it on each subsequent page, but that is hundreds of pages and I'd like to avoid that if I can.

The backstory: I have a designer who reports to me that is unfamiliar with Paragraph styles, but they just completed a document that I would like to make more evergreen. They ran a data merge, but didn't assign any styles prior to creating the merged document and then had hours of work afterwards adjusting graphics on each page. All of the text is the same and based on the initial text box, so is there a faster way than going through one by one to assign styles to all of the pages? That way, if anything needs changed moving foward we can easily adjust the style instead of having to adjust each page individually.

Any help would be greatly appreciated — I'm new to using scripts and have no idea how to make them myself, but after using a few to speedup my workflow I figure it's worth asking before doing it all manually.

rob day · Accepted Answer

This would get all of the document’s text frames where the first word is "Compliments" then style the next 5 lines:

var doc = app.activeDocument;
var api = doc.allPageItems;

var tf;
for (var i = 0; i < api.length; i++){
    //gets all text frames where the first word of the frame is "Compliments"
    if (api[i].constructor.name  == "TextFrame" && api[i].paragraphs[0].words[0].contents == "Compliments") {
        tf = api[i]
        //Assigns Paragraph Styles named Name, Title, Email, Phone, and Company to lines 2 thru 6
        tf.paragraphs[1].appliedParagraphStyle = makeParaStyle(doc, "Name")
        tf.paragraphs[2].appliedParagraphStyle = makeParaStyle(doc, "Title")
        tf.paragraphs[3].appliedParagraphStyle = makeParaStyle(doc, "Email")
        tf.paragraphs[4].appliedParagraphStyle = makeParaStyle(doc, "Phone")
        tf.paragraphs[5].appliedParagraphStyle = makeParaStyle(doc, "Company")
    } 
};   


/**
* Makes a new named ParagraphStyle if it does not already exist 
* @ param the document to add the style to 
* @ param style name 
* @ return the new paragraph style 
*/

function makeParaStyle(d, n){
    if (d.paragraphStyles.itemByName(n).isValid) {
        return d.paragraphStyles.itemByName(n);
    } else {
        return d.paragraphStyles.add({name:n});
    }
}

rob day · Answer

Hi @Zach Field , Just to clarify, do all of the pages have the same number of text frames, and each text frame on page 1 is styled differently?

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