Markdown-style bold and italic in Calc

I just noticed that in calc, If I write the following in a cell:

test *demo* 123

The result will format as:

test demo 123

Is there a way to have a substring formatted as Italic in a similar way?

I tried with test **demo** 123 but it doesn’t work.

For italics, use a slash (/), so:

test /demo/ 123

That works, thanks!

This depends on the setting for
Automatic *bold*, /italic/, -strikeout- and _underline_
under
>Tools>AutoCorrect Options...>>Options

The default was changed from Enabled to Disabled with V 7.4 in pursuit of tdf#133023.

My suggestion: Disable the option. It’s conflicting (e.g.) with versions of markdown (also with the CommonMark version used by this site - now discourse driven).