🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm so proud of my first script--a simple series of find and replaces-- which I figured out from trial and error and browsing this forum and the ID scripting guide. But now I need to do something that seems to me very complex and I have no idea where to start or if it is even possible.

I'm working with a product catalog that I'm trying to create an easy-to-update index that lists each product in alphabetical order with its product number and page. I'm using the TOC feature to create a contents list and then I scripted a series of find and replaces to get each product name and product number and page number into a single tab-delimited line. I now need to broaden my script to alphabetize the entire list by product name disregarding intro articles such as "a" and "the" and any first character punctuation. Is this possible to do with a script?

Oh, another little thing. I was able to change the paragraph styles of the text while doing my find and changes, but I can't seem to figure out how to get rid of all the character styles that got dragged in with the text. I've tried several different things, none of which return errors, but the character styles are still there.

I am very new to all this so any advice and help is appreciated. Thanks!