Thanks for the reply! I wasn't able to get your instructions to work, but it did give me a clue on how to do it in Word. For future reference, this is how I did it:
In the Find/Replace dialog box under Find, type <*>, select "Use wildcards", click on the Format button and select Font, then Italic and click OK.
Under Replace, type [^&] click on Format button, Font and Regular, then OK.
Then click on Replace all. This will put brackets around each italicized word and change the font from italic to regular, without harming the text.
One problem remains; there are places where several words in a row were italicized and we now have separate brackets around each word such as: "[which] [they] [will]"
Under Find, type ] [
Under Replace, hit the Space bar once. Then click Replace all once again.
This will remove the interior brackets and put a space there, so using the above example, you end up with "[which they will]" which is the correct format.
I did almost 20,000 replacements in a matter of seconds once I figured out these commands!