title: Stata: append two datasets, retain value labels
body: <p>I'm using Stata14 and I'm trying to append two survey datasets that have ~200 variables with same names but different values and value labels. I would like to do the appending so that value labels are retained from the dataset 'on disk'.</p>
  
  <p>Here is an example describing my problem:</p>
  
  <p>Variable in dataset 1 (master):</p>
  
  <p>value - label<br>
  1 - yes<br>
  2 - no</p>
  
  <p>Same variable in dataset 2 (appended to master):</p>
  
  <p>value - label<br>
  1 - yes absolutely<br>
  2 - no definitely not<br>
  3 - maybe<br>
  4 - don't know</p>
  
  <p>Result with <code>append using "dataset 2.dta"</code></p>
  
  <p>value - label<br>
  1 - yes<br>
  2 - no<br>
  3 - 3<br>
  4 - 4</p>
  
  <p>Desired result:</p>
  
  <p>value - label<br>
  1 - yes<br>
  2 - no<br>
  3 - maybe<br>
  4 - don't know</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way to do this directly using <code>append</code>? If not, any suggestions on doing the task efficiently are most welcome.</p>