Hello everyone!

I am trying to merge two data files from different sources using the command merge 1:1, based on a string variable Country. However, the merge is never successful, even though the names of countries in both data sets are identical.
I suspect this is because each of the data files has Country saved as a different type of variable (str42 and str30). When I try to merge, Stata tries to adjust the data (note: variable Country was str30, now str42 to accommodate using data's values) which, I believe, causes the merge to fail.

Is there any way to deal with this issue?

Any help is very appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Barbora