Undoubtedly, you have a Style conflict between whatever Style is in use in the RTF (Word will assume the 'Normal' Style if none is specified) and the corresponding Style in Word. Instead of going about things as you are now, you might consider not applying your formatting to the RTF and, instead, format the content via appropriately-defined Styles once it's been imported into Word.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]