Can I use merge without force option

[zhang xinya]

When I was using "merge", I got the error that "variable releaseversion is str4 in master but double in using data". But I have used "describe" to test the variable that it's double. WHY? I was so confused.
And it has remind me that "You could specify merge's force option to ignore this string/numeric mismatch." But i am afraid that it may lose some data information. Is there any other way to address this problem without using force option??

[Rich Goldstein]

use -search- to find and download -precombine- and use it to find all such problems and then fix them (either using, e.g., -tostring- or -destring- as desired); do not use the "force" option as you will lose information as it will make the values missing in one of the data sets;

you say that you used -describe- but apparently you used it on only one of your data sets; it is very unlikely that Stata is wrong about this so believe the message and find the issue, decide which way you want to go to fix it and do not use the "force" option