How to hyphenate numbers?

[faseolli]

Hello,

how can I hyphenate numbers?

I have the following problem:
In my catalog are many tables with Article-Numbers, which consists of numbers and letters, f.e. ABC123XYZ. I need to hyphen this Article- Numbers in the corresponding column, so the content fits (and line-breaks if needed) and causes no overset errors. Unfortunately indesign doesnt hyphenate numbers, even when I add the Article-Number with hyphens to the user-dictionary through Edit>Spelling>UserDictionary...

Because of many entries, I need this to happen automatically and not manually by adding Type>InsertSpecialCharacter>HypensAndDashes>DiscretionaryHyphens.

How can I solve this?

Thanks...

[SJRiegel]

This is a job for GREP find/change - (edited for discretionary hypen instead of a dash)

This expression will work even if your number of letters and numbers is not always the same.

It finds a full "word" consisting of any number of upper case letters followed by any number of digits, and replaces it with the letters, a discretionary hyphen, then the numbers

[faseolli]

Thanks, it works, but theres a small drawback, the search applies to the complete document. Is it possible to specify the search and apply only on tables in the document?

[SJRiegel]

If the text in your tables has a different paragraph- or character style formatting (or different formatting), you could use that (in the Find Format box of the GREP dialog) to isolate the change to the tables.

[SJRiegel]

One more option, if the formatting idea does not work:

If the table cells each contain only the number, and in other cases the number is part of a paragraph, you could change to expression to 

^(\u+)(\d+)$

--changing the beginning and ending codes makes the search target only the Article-Numbers that are an entire paragraph by themselves.

[FRIdNGE]

Hi Susan!

7 years ago, limited but just enough here:

https://www.rolanddreger.net/de/249/highlight-grep-in-indesign/

Other thing that has nothing to see with Roland Dreger's Script*! …

Soon, you could use this new Grep syntax:

Find: \<(\u+)(\d+)\>(?#Tables)

Replace by: $1~-$2

(^/)  The Jedi

[* "Tables" and "Live" very clever features imagined in this so cool Script.]

[faseolli]

@FRIdNGE

Unfortunately there is no difference in the results between

\<(\u+)(\d+)\>(?#Tables)

and

\<(\u+)(\d+)\>

But thanks for the mentioned script, it helps.

[FRIdNGE]

I've written "Soon" not "now!  =D

… and sure, this new syntax has no more effect comparised to Susan's grep code/

Use Roland's script for now!

(^/)

[faseolli]

Hm, this option doesnt show the complete number of hits. It shows a very small amount of results. Nevertheless, the approach is very helpful and I will continue testing till the correct result. Thanks for your help...