Enhance Your Google Docs: Automatically Add Special Characters to Bolded Paragraphs with Google Apps Script

/**
 * Adds a custom menu to the Google Docs UI upon opening the document.
 */
function onOpen() {
  DocumentApp.getUi()
    .createMenu('Custom Scripts')
    .addItem('Mark Bold-Start Paragraphs', 'markBoldStartParagraphs')
    .addToUi();
}

/**
 * Adds an asterisk at the beginning of each paragraph where the first word is fully bolded.
 */
function markBoldStartParagraphs() {
  var doc = DocumentApp.getActiveDocument();
  var body = doc.getBody();
  var paragraphs = body.getParagraphs();
  var markedCount = 0;

  paragraphs.forEach(function(paragraph) {
    var text = paragraph.getText();

    // Check if the paragraph is empty to avoid errors
    if (text.length > 0) {
      // Determine the end of the first word
      var firstWordEnd = text.indexOf(' ') !== -1 ? text.indexOf(' ') : text.length;
      
      // Check if the entire first word is bolded by iterating through each character
      var textElement = paragraph.editAsText();
      var isBold = true;

      for (var i = 0; i < firstWordEnd; i++) {
        // If any character is not bold, mark isBold as false and break
        if (textElement.isBold(i) === false) {
          isBold = false;
          break;
        }
      }

      // If the first word is fully bolded, prepend the asterisk
      if (isBold) {
        textElement.insertText(0, '* ');
        markedCount++;
      }
    }
  });

  DocumentApp.getUi().alert(markedCount + ' paragraphs have been marked with an asterisk.');
}