Here is a situation I just ran into. I created a form which uses a Date type for a field "Member Since". I also made this field "admin only" since the admin will be filling in the date on the back end (this is for entering historical data.) Anyway, the date picker does not show on the back end when you edit an entry, and the helpful "description" text does not appear under the field either.
So, my user was entering data here as "2009" for example, but the field is looking for date in the format MM/DD/YYYY. With no date picker and no help description when editing the entry in the back end, they complained to me that "their edits were not being saved." Which is true, for this field (even though the confirmation message at the top said "Entry Updated.")
So, now that I know what the problem is (date being entered with an incorrect format) how can I change this field to just plain text (so the data entered can be almost anything) without losing the data? I don't see a way to change the field type, since that would probably require converting the data in some cases. If I delete the field, I lose the data.
Any ideas (other than exporting the values for this field from the database, deleting the field, recreating the field in a different type, the importing the data back in to the new field)?
