Exporting Character style and Page Reference to Excel file

[Tuuluuwag]

Hello brains of InDesign...

I have a 40 pg document that has a whole series of products listed in it - upwards of 400 products. Each product has a product number that is setup in its own character style. I was asked if we can export an excel file that shows the product number and the page it's on. Is there a simple way of doing this? I believe there may be a script to run, but i have no idea where to find something so specific like this. 

Any help?

Thanks!

[Willi Adelberger]

3rd party developer created plugin ins to connect to data bases and Excel. Some of them allow 2-ways, from the DB to InDesign and if you make changes or add something back to the DB. Search for DB connections to InDesign. Those Plugins are not cheap, but useful.

[brian_p_dts · Accepted solution]

Here is a JSX simplistic script that should do what you need.

app.findTextPreferences = null;
app.findTextPreferences.appliedCharacterStyle = "Your Style Name";
var fs = app.activeDocument.findText();
var a = [];
var pp;
for (var i = 0; i < fs.length; i++) {
    try {
        pp = fs[i].parentTextFrames[0].parentPage.name;
    } catch(e) {
        //textframe probably in pasteboard
        pp = "PB";
    }
    a.push(fs[i].contents + "," + pp);
}

var f = File(Folder.desktop + "/sku-log.csv");
f.encoding = "UTF-8";
f.open("w");
f.writeln(a.join("\n"));
f.close();
alert("Fin");

 Run it on the open doc. Change the character style name to the one you want to target, leaving the quotes.  It will save a sku-log.csv file out to your desktop. 

[Tuuluuwag]

This. Wow. 

Thank you very much!

Truly above helpful. 

Shawn