Getting formatted text data out of Excel and into Indesign

I have a large quantity of text in an Excel spreadsheet, lightly formated (underlining and italics of certain words). I want to turn it into text, then place it into an InDesign document (as a "story", not as a table. What is the best way to do this? I tried exporting to a .csv file and then opening and saving it as a Word document, but in the process I lost the formatting.