[Plugin: Rich Text Widget] Upgrading to v1.0 erases existing rich text widgets

I’m really sorry, I thought nobody use it cause it’s broken since a long time with new versions of wordpress. So I neglected compatibility with old version when i completely rewrote the plugin.

you could have your data recovered by reinstalling the old one :
https://downloads.www.ads-software.com/plugin/rich-text-widget.0.2.zip

I did install the old one to attempt a recovery of the data and it did not restore the original rich text widget content ??

I had the same problem as surfpole8. I was able to recover my sidebar content by reverting to the older version of the plugin as well as connecting to a new DB (luckily I had a recent backup to import).

So is there any way I can upgrade without loosing my old widgets? Thank you in advance for any hint

The only way is to backup the content of your old widgets.