Well, if anyone else finds this via Google. I managed to ‘fix’ this by:
1. Created ‘fieldname_2’
2. Renamed the busted field ‘fieldname_old’
3. Renamed ‘fieldname_2’ to ‘fieldname’ (the original name of the busted field)
4. Erased ‘fieldname_old’ (the value data was now in ‘fieldname’)
5. Then I had to go into every post and make some change (I added a space to the text) to the value and save.
That got things back to where I needed them. I’m sure there’s a way you can automate all of some of that above but that’s beyond my ken so I had to go in and edit 100+ posts which is as fun as it sounds.
