GREP First Instance Only

[CharlieChuck01]

I have a large directory I'm trying to format. Each entry has a list of items followed by a descriptive paragraph. Each item in the list has a label followed by a colon. I want to style the label along with the colon, making them bold and all-caps. I had success with the following expression:

.+\:

Which ends up like this:

PHONE NUMBER: 123-456-7890

WEBSITE: www.adobe.com

The problem is, that occasionally one of the descriptive paragraphs will also have a colon, resulting in this:

OVERVIEW: THIS TEXT SHOULD NOT BE STYLED: and should return to normal after only the first colon.

I've been trying various expressions to get it to work and either I get all the text styled, none of the text styled or the above problem. Any help is appreciated! Thank you!

[Jongware · Accepted solution]

GREP is greedy by default; it tries to match as much as possible. Make your expression non-greedy by adding a question mark:

^.+?:

or use a nested style "Up to" and then type a colon.

[CharlieChuck01]

Thank you! Worked like a charm; I was putting the ? AFTER the colon, and also escaping the colon..

[mycc3]

Similar case. But I want to get the found string without the colon.

If I would use following term it would be the same problem, it will become greedy:

Searching for:

(.+)?:

Replacing with (formatted): 

$1\r

That's the result:

Is there any solution to search for "OVERVIEW:", but replacing it with "OVERVIEW[new paragraph]" = not with the colon?

THANKS!

mycc

[uniq1]

Try this:

find:(.+?):