Your second example is well prepaired, thank you. Then: All Caps is set to ‘City’, but not to ‘Listing’.

So I decide to compare the acutal applied paragraph style with the style of the previous paragraph.

Try this one:

(function () {
  var curDoc = app.documents[0],
  allParas = curDoc.stories.everyItem().paragraphs.everyItem().getElements(),
  p,
  curPara,
  prevPara,
  pStyleName;

  for (p = 0; p < allParas.length; p++) {
    curPara = allParas[p];
    prevPara = allParas[p-1];
    pStyleName = curPara.appliedParagraphStyle.name;
    if (pStyleName == "COMPANY NAME" && (prevPara.appliedParagraphStyle.name == "LISTING TYPE" || prevPara.appliedParagraphStyle.name == "Listing type no space")) {
      allParas[p].appliedParagraphStyle = "COMPANY NAME - No space above";
    }
    else if (pStyleName == "LISTING TYPE" && allParas[p-1].appliedParagraphStyle.name == "CITY") {
      allParas[p].appliedParagraphStyle = "Listing type no space";
    }
  }
}());

Kai

It’s not clear to me, where and how there is space. So please provide a idml file before/after, with some entries, that we can inspect your data.

Kai

Everything from start included the colon:

^[^:]+:

Everything from start excluded the colon:

^[^:]+

The GREP find the beginning of a paragraph, followed by anything, that is not a colon, one or multiple times, followed by a colon (first case) or not (second case)

Kai

Hi Kathy,

this should work for all open docs:

app.documents.everyItem().layers.itemByName("test").remove();

Hi Brendan,

try this one:

var allTables = app.activeDocument.stories.everyItem().tables.everyItem();
allTables.rows.everyItem().height = 5.5;
allTables.columns.everyItem().width = 15;
allTables.rows.firstItem().height = 12;

It will not check, if the first line is a real header-row. It will give the height to all first lines.
Realize also, that you get maybe overset or the textframe is not fitting the table.

Kai

The first ones should be

~8\x20(.)

To your explanation on #2: It looks not to the first character of the next paragraph, since lookararounds find only positions and not characters.

From a technical point of view, there is no ‘simply update a file’. InDesign will place this file, as if it were never in your document.

So the idea is:
1. Create a template with styles in InDesign
2. Export a file to rtf
3. The texter write in this file and use your styles
4. Update your file

If the texter use your styles and you did nothing in your document, you should get the right result.

If you want a bit more comfort, you should try wordsflow from emsoft.

Also I can recommend Anne Maries Title on InDesign/Word-Workflow at Lynda.com.

Kai