Thanks for the help. Been swamped at work but this job went much easier in InDesign and the customer approved the first proof.
The 2 importing Word posts above helped me fix the problem. I was able to import the Word files while mapping to my ID paragraph styles and did the find/change and clear overides. Still placed pdfs of the Word tables and charts because the ID column width was so much narrower than the 1 column Word docs but making them achored graphics speeded up the process.

Thanks, David

Some background info. I started both documents as new documents in IDCS4. Could have used CS5 or 6 but CS4 opens lots faster. I had to make the long column working document to prepare for the new edition I will be working on Monday so I ended up cutting and pasting the text boxes from the 6pg layout to the working long col. doc 1 story at a time. Now they match but I will need to resolve this as the plan is to have all the new stories pasted or placed into the long column docment and paste into the 6pg layout once the column lengths are figured out and adjusted. I’m assuming I should have the 6pg text boxes empty and un-threaded with the paragraph style set to basic.

I will check the paragraph styles in both documents and also makes sure no character styles are referenced in the paragraph styles. I did create a character style for italic style only, no font size, etc to make the referenced papers in the text italic.

Can you elaborate on why copying from Word is not prefered? There are some tables in some of the supplied Word stories that we have been saving as PDFs from Word and placing in InD. Not sure if the tables would place directly with the text. I do need to use the InDesign paragraph styles and I am not sure if the Word docs used any defined paragraph styles. It would be helpful if placing the Word doc directly kept the italic and bold type while honoring the font and size of the InD paragraph style.

Thanks for the tips. I was using Command-I instead of Command-Shift-I.
I must have had some text selected when I tried creating a Character Style with only italic because it would not let me clear the size. With no text selection I was able to create a working Character Style.

I tried adding a shortcut to the new char style since I prefer a 2 finger shortcut for the left hand so I can mouse select with the right. For some reason I can’t seem to get a shortcut to set in either the character style or paragraph style. I tried the Mac ID CS4 and also my PC ID CS5.5. Don’t know why I just get the warning sound on both version when typing a shortcut because I have used them in the past.