When you import the Word file, choose Show Import Options. To strip out most of the strange Word styles but retain the bolds and italics and so on, choose the option “Remove Styles and Formatting” but turn on the checkbox immediately below that says “Preserve Locsl Overrides”.
You can often then just apply an ID paragraph style to the paragraph, and by default it will not override local formatting, so your bolds and italics remain intact.
Best practice is to create and apply character styles to those local overrides, either in Word before you bring it in, or in InDesign afterwards. There are a number of shortcuts and even free scripts that will do that for you. I cover all of these pretty thoroughly in my course on LinkedIn Learning, “Using InDesign and Word Together”:
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/word-and-indesign-integration/welcome
Note that an updated version of this course will be published in the next few weeks. It’s called “Smarter Workflows with InDesign and Word.”
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