CMS Made Simple Forums

I've couple of custom input fields that needs to be changed to Text Area field. Is there a way to do it without deleting the existing input and lose its data?

The only solution I know is to delete the existing input field and create new Text area with the same name. But that deletes the existing data in the input field.

is there no way to just swap or change input to Text Area?

can anyone advise?

There's no way to do it in the admin panel, but I just tried changing the type to textarea in the database and it seems like it works fine.

Back up first, then edit the table cms_module_news_fielddefs. Find the appropriate fielddef and change the type from textbox to textarea.