GREP Style, for limited amount of words and symbols before a colon

[C.Lor]

Hello,

Anytime I have a colon at the start of a paragraph, I would like the words and symbols up to and including the colon bold and underlined. I have been using this which I found in another forum: 

^(((?!:)\w)+.?+\s?){1,3}?:

An Example: Looks like this every time up to 3 words. Exactly what I need.

But This (BT): Does not change to my bold/underline style, even if I increase the range from {1,3} to {1,10}

+1 Not Working: It also fails to work with other symbols. 

Something like this might work: ^.*?(?=:)

However, I have a few instances of a colon at the end of a long sentence, and don't want the bold/underline style applied then. I'm relatively new to GREP and while I'm starting to grasp it, some things still escape me entirely. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[jmlevy]

Why don't you use a simple nested style?

[C.Lor]

Thanks for the suggestion but that applies it to everything except the words in the sentence that immediately follow the colon. I don't believe a nested style will work the same way a GREP style can, since a GREP can be much more targeted to a specific instance.

[FRIdNGE · Accepted solution]

^([^:\h]+\h?){1,3}(?=:)

(^/)  The Jedi

[C.Lor]

That worked perfectly! I'm not familiar with \h, what does that do?

[m1b]

\h means any space character, including tab for example.

[Laubender]

\h stands for horizontal space.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )