Reply To: Running Headers with single characters but no duplicates

Power Headers doesn’t work with InDesign CC 2014, at the moment. So I’m testing the demo in CS6.

I can confirm that it will indeed do what I wanted. These notes might help someone else.

1. Create a text box on the master page where your running headers will go
2. Create a character style for the text that sits inside it, e.g. LH Run
3. Assign a character or paragraph style to any text in your document that will be used to provide information for your running headers, e.g. the first character of a person’s name
4. InTools > Power Headers > Label Header Frame, to give that text box from #1 a name, e.g. Header Frame
5. InTools > Power Headers > Define Header Variables… New

Variable style is the character style you created
Header Frame Label is from #4, Header Frame
The rest of the options are reasonably self-explanatory.

However, the import things are to:

Place some text in the header frame – it can be anything.
In the Define Header Variable options, click on GREP Processors… create a new one and put:

Delete Duplicates this is the GREP name (can be anything you like)
(.)\1+ this finds duplicate characters
$1 this leaves just one character if there’s a duplicate
LH Run assigns the character style you made in step 2

Now, click OK four times to get back to InDesign.

InTools > Power Headers > Define Global GREP Processors… create a new one and put:

Doubles this is the GREP name (can be anything you like)
(.)(.) this finds two characters together
$1–$2 this adds an em-dash between those two characters
LH Run assigns the character style you made in step 2

So it seems quite complex but once you’ve worked it out a couple of times, it’s actually rather simple.