Dear all,

I have just concluded cleaning up my dataset with around 848,950 observations. Nevertheless, some of the variables are string variables which I need to encode (convert to numeric). When I follow the typical procedure of encoding the variables, I get the following error message:

error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Return code 134
too many values
1) You attempted to encode a string variable that takes on
more than 65,536 unique values. 2) You attempted to tabulate
a variable or pair of variables that take on too many values.
If you specified two variables, try interchanging them.
3) You issued a graph command using the by option. The
by-variable takes on too many different values to construct
a readable chart.

Is there any other way I could encode these string variables?

Thank you so much!