losing italics in preview

Since posting, I located a thread that deals with this issue. I have modified the techniques I found there and have a fix that has worked so far. (Note, I had all italics defined in a character style before starting process below.)

1. Create a new character style called italics only and strip out all character attributes except italics = yes.
2. Select all instances of old italics character style and reformat as italics only.
3. Go to formatting bar and reset all italics only text to Regular, then re-set as Italics.

This process has to be repeated throughout the book, since the scope of the "Select all uses of x" command seems to be limited. (By section?)

Nasty hitch: after doing this, all selected instances formerly set to italic only show up as modified None in the characters styles palette. (I.e., they display the red flippy triangle.) God help me if I need to select them again.

I hope like crazy this works. I'll send up another flare if it doesn't. If anyone has any words of wisdom, I'd still be grateful to hear 'em.

Apple: c'mon guys. This one looks like an easy catch.

Whoa! There went all my formatting! Sorry folks, the post above was a readable list with lots of italics before I hit the post button.

Umh...Apple...there's this language called CSS that really does great work formatting text...

And now, since I left the page and returned, the formatting of my first reply has re-appeared. I'm getting out of here before the weirdness jumps down the internet and into my iMac.