MS Word Macro: Search for styles?

Is there a way to have MS Word search through the entire document for all instances of italic text, assign the text position to variables or arrays or some form of storage, set all paragraph styles to normal, remove all formatting, then reapply the italic instances?

Basically I have this Word document that is massive. The only formatting that needs to be preserved are the italics. So I need a way to strip all formatting and set all paragraph types to normal but have Word remember where the italic words were and re-italicize them.

Any help would be appreciated.