Mark certain text in document

Question

Our indd documents contain several product names that we have to write in a certain way. The product name must be in all caps, and we must have a descriptior after it. I've been going through the documents manually and formatting all of these, but there are times that I miss one or two. What I want to know is if there is way to insert or identify the product names in the document, and have it format them a certain way within the copy. I also want to know if there is a way I can count all of the products mentioned in the document.
I know I can do this with a custom text variable for each one, but wanted to see if there was an easier way. If I use custom text vars, is there a way I can count how many instances of each one there are?

Answer 1

You should use Paragraph Styles to apply a style setting to each product.
You can do this by completing one product, then make a new paragraph style, it should pick up on it's settings once you have the text cursor active in that paragraph.
From here - you can do a find replace to apply the paragarph style.
For example, you can search for unique style you have in your product name, whether it's a font, size, or colour - you can search for all 3 or more unique settings to the product and how they are displayed. But be careful you don't pick up any stray text that is the same style but not a product.
Let me know if that helps - as I don't know how your document is setup.
We can come back to counting the instances of products later.