Retain italics & bold using paragraph styles when bringing in Word text to Indesign

Just wanted to point out that if you have a charachter style or paragraph style selected when you import, it can change everything. Import word doc ctrl+D, click  show import options, remove styles and formatting from text and tables, check preserve local overrides, create charachter styles for italics, bolds, find and replace basic character format font style with the style you created. Once you have replaced basic character formating with actual character styles, now you can select all and change to any paragraph style you want.

Do not import word with a character style selected, make sure it says no character style otherwise everything will turn italic/bold.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/isklyd6afpyolzr/AABTQ6c8G-Q-3YSN-5CAi8sra?dl=0

http://think I can only insert an image.. or a link to url... can't seem to work out to insert sample docs...

@ chad tried this and all sorts of odd things happening. The para that has the italic in is now remaining the same font as it came in.  The rest of the doc will change to the correct para style I created.

I have done all above (set char styles for bold and italic, done the none after import, removed all unwanted imported styles that came in with word, etc etc.)

Bevi, I will have to further investigate. I can see how to change the character style to emphasis in Word (although yet to work out the find and replace..) and then bring it to Indesign.  The problem is that it comes in correctly to InDesign and when I change to my para style that I want the italic disappears.  I think Lynda.com will help..

Here's a summary of the bits and pieces folks have stated above.

(We do tons of books, academic texts, automated workflows, EPUBs, PDFs, and accessibility, so these steps work!)

1. Fix your author's Word document. Wherever they used the B and I buttons in the top ribbon bar (which is manually formatting bold and italics), replace it with character styles.
   1. Word already has built in character styles for bold (called Strong) and italics (called Emphasis). You can see them in Word's Styles panel by changing the panel's options to Show All Styles (not the recommended ones...no one choose that!).
   2. Strong and Emphasis are the universally recognized styles for bold and italics. If you need bold-italics, make a new Character style for it and call it whatever you want.
2. Using Word's Find/Replace, search for the manual bolds and italics and replace them with their matching character styles, Strong and Emphasis.
   1. Expand the dialogue box's options by clicking the More button. Use the Format menu at the bottom to look for font/bold and replace with style/strong. Pretty straightforward; you'll figure this part out.
3. Save the document.
4. Place it into InDesign and use the Import Options to Map Styles.
   1. You should already have character styles in your InDesign template for Strong and Emphasis...they are universal for all forms of digital publishing. So they should be there on the right side to match up to the Word versions on the left side.
5. Voila! All the strong and emphasis character styles will be there formatting those words for you in your InDesign layout.

One note:

When in Word, be careful to NOT use strong or emphasis character styles on headings. The theory is that the heading style itself will add the bold or italics as needed, so a character still will just get in the way and produce unpredictable formatting.

Therefore, when you're finding/replacing in Word, sometimes it's better to click the Find Next button and cycle through them one by one, choosing to apply the character style or not as you go along. Doing a global "Replace All" might paint you in a corner!

Hope this helps.

With the amount of documents you produce, it's worthwhile to invest some training/learning in these advanced techniques for both Word and InDesign.

Another phenomenal place to learn about Word and its "special quirks" is at https://shaunakelly.com/  Shauna Kelly, now deceased, was one of the most incredible Microsoft MVPs and trainers in the industry. Before she passed away, she released her training materials into the public domain and they are maintained today by her dedicated colleagues and friends.

me and Word.... can use Adobe software 8/10... Office 3/10

no idea how to do that and client supplied the Word doc. This must happen all the time.  I have tried scripts, tried the find and change options and to no avail.  A small fix is to make sure the word doc is the same font as I want to use but there are restrictions with this as some fonts in word change the italics to regular.

help

elliotlipsh​

Here you go - https://indesignsecrets.com/import-word-files-into-indesign-remove-local-formatting-but-keep-italics-and-bold.php

If you’re frequently placing Word files in InDesign it might be worth studying how to do it properly and efficiently. Lynda.com have a really good online video tutorial on this (you can get a 30-day free trial):

Word and InDesign: Integration

My suggested solution: Style up your Word document!

In Word, create a Bold-Italic character style (if any), a Bold character style and an Italic one.

Use Find/Change Word feature to apply Bold-Italic style to all Bold-Italic text, same process with Bold and Italic text.

Mapping styles in INDD will finish the work nicely...