One Line Bold In A List

[gregory_3768]

I have a list of over 2000 names with phone number, specialty and other info that I transfered from a Numbers document to InDesign. I want to go through and bold just the line with the Name. The nesting of a character style won't work because that only works in a paragraph. Is there another way to get that one line bold? Obvioulsy without going through each and every name over 2000 times.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Can you post a screenshot - with Hidden Characters VISIBLE.

[gregory_3768]

 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@gregory_3768

Thanks, next style idea won't work. 

Can you import it again - and use my idea with a table and applying styles to columns? 

Or probably some nice GREP could select text after two "end of paragraphs". 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Or simply:

"^p^p" to: "^p^p#$#" 

Then: 

"#$#" to "" - nothing but apply ParaStyle. 

Then: 

"#$#" to "" - nothing and without ParaStyle - so it will remove it. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

But first - "^p^p^p" to "^p^p" - to remove two empty paragraphs.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Having the category heading fall right before a name is going to complicate this. Otherwise, a simple GREP replacement to look for —

• <return><return><all text><return>

and apply a bold char or para style would do a 99% job, subject to a necessary visual review.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Having the category heading fall right before a name is going to complicate this. Otherwise, a simple GREP replacement to look for —

• <return><return><all text><return>

and apply a bold char or para style would do a 99% job, subject to a necessary visual review.

By @James Gifford—NitroPress

Or GREP with 3x (): 

(\p)(.+)(\p)

$1###$2$3

Then as my 2nd and 3rd step - and those headings will be sorted as well.

And this should be done first - after replacing double empty lines - then my early suggestion - but with "no style" applied to the searches. 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

As an aside, if you need anything more sophisticated, here is a page from a 1000-page publication that I did using Em Software InData. InData allowed sorting by specialty, county, and city, showing the heading only once even through the info was listed in every entry. It also inserted graphics and yes/no based on an if/else statement. There were some text blah-blah pages, but about 800 pages were various listings. The 800 pages took me less that 2 hours to layout. 

[Willi Adelberger]

Make for each line type a paragraph style. 
Work with next paragraph style in a loop. 
Avoid empty paragraphs, never use more than 1 return in a row. 
Make the first paragraph only keep with next, the others keep with previous. 
No character styles needed here. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Make for each line type a paragraph style. 
Work with next paragraph style in a loop. 
Avoid empty paragraphs, never use more than 1 return in a row. 
Make the first paragraph only keep with next, the others keep with previous. 
No character styles needed here. 

By @Willi Adelberger

Next style in a loop won't work - there are multiples of the same kind of information. 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

BUT the original spreadsheet file would have had empty fields for any missing listings. As long as those are not removed BEFORE applying the next-style settings, it would work fine. After that, you can remove excess returns.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Dave Creamer of IDEAS

If OP can reimport texts - there are multiple ways to do it. 

But if the text is already "half done"... 

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Not to sure about "half done". I see 16 entries out to 2000. Hopefully the OP asked for help before going through the entire list! 😜

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

This will work on pretty much ANY kind of blocks of text:

(ID-Tasker isn't a free tool)

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

And in action:

Of course everything is fully configurable.

[gregory_3768]

The original file was in Excel which was opened in Numbers. See screenshot of original Excel and my updated Numbers. I'm not super savvy with Numbers [or Excel] but I was able to combine all the "name" info into it's own column. I can not get the infor to import into InDesign, and maintian the bold text. I'm copy and pasting the info into InDesign and then I have what you see in the other screenshot. So from this point it's just trying to get the "name" line only into bold text. There is a "category" which it's not hard to get that to just one line of text before I copy from Numbers. If I have to eliminate that column before copying I can go back and add later.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Do you want to send me your Excel file (and InDesign file if possible)? For InDesign, I only need one page with the paragraph styles. Click on my name and IM me. I'll document the steps.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@gregory_3768

Import your Excel / Numbers data as a Table, create ParaStyles - for each column - then select each column and apply corresponding ParaStyle.

Then select whole Table and Convert To Text - with Paragraph as a separator for cells and rows. 

Then delete - using Find&Change - double empty paragraphs. 

Extra spacing before / after - you can set in ParaStyles. 

[Peter Spier]

BUT the original spreadsheet file would have had empty fields for any missing listings. As long as those are not removed BEFORE applying the next-style settings, it would work fine. After that, you can remove excess returns.

By @Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Actually, that isn't as easy as you think. The blank paragrapghs aren't really blank -- they have a merge field placeholder -- and there are problems with the styles shifting to the wrong paragraphs.

@UweLaubender did a remarkable job some years back solving this but my link to the discussion on the old forum is now dead. 😞

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Yes it is. There are no "strange" characters involved nor are there any merged fields. I've done this too many times. Plus I just ran a test and it worked perfectly.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Here is what I sent via IM to the OP:

1. Just export the Excel file as tab-delimited.
2. Open in Word and find ^t (tabs) and change to ^p (paragraph returns).
3. Do NOT remove excess paragraph returns yet.
4. Save.
5. Place in InDesign.
6. Set up styles for each line. If some styles are the same, name them Specialty1, Specialty2, Specialty3, etc.
7. The last style should loop back (via Next Style) to the first style, therefore creating a circular format.
8. Each record will have the same number of lines, although some might be empty (just a paragraph return).
9. Select all the text.
10. Right-click on the first style and select Apply Style and Next Style.
11. Now you can search for extra returns. Use the Grep multiple returns to one.

That's it.

If you have category headings, such as Adolescent Medicine, import each category one at a time.

[Scott Falkner]

I would replace the returns in each list item with line breaks then use Nested Styles or Line Styles to make the first line bold. 

Use Find/Change to make each two paragraph breaks (^p^p) into something you aren’t using anywhere, like three square brackets. Then change every paragraph break (^p) into a line break (^n). Finally change the string you used earlier into one paragraph break.

Make your formatting so the first line is bold and add a space before of one line. This will prevent a blank line from starting a page or column. Maybe make the Keep Options so the paragraph doesn’t break.

[gregory_3768]

THANK YOU! I did a "version" of this where I put a column of the symbol % and did the covert all hard returns into soft returns, then covert all the % sign only with a hard return, applied the nested style and BINGO, it worked. Now, my particular version left a bunch of soft returns that I need to deal with, but that is a breeze.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Scott Falkner

Won't Nested Styles go high-wire when empty paras get removed?

Unless ONLY the first line should be styled... But then, there is no point in line breaks?