Hi Greg,
I have had a look at my test documents and indeed it seems I have taken the wrong conclusion about the string lenghts and more important, that the real problem is the line endings being italic.

I have tested the code you posted and actually that solved my problem completely with the test document.

Unfortunately, the solution does not work with the real life documents. Obviously, there is more going on; the disappearing italics are inside list items.
In order to provide a test document that shows this, I should post it in this forum. Is that posssible?

Ruud