You are probably using the IC or "inter-cooled" version of Stata. Most Stata users have the SE version. I strongly recommend that you get an upgrade to Stata 14 SE. An upgrade is cheaper than a new purchase. There is no simple workaround for this problem. They only way I know how to handle it is to download the .do, .dct, and .dat files that are used to construct the .dta file, edit the .do and .dct files by deleting big blocks of variables, and then reconstructing the .dta file. I have done that before. Another possibility, that I have not tried, if you have SPSS and Stat Transfer, would be to open the SPSS .sav file, delete blocks of variables within SPSS, save, and then convert the reduced .sav file to a .dta file with Stat Transfer. I hope another forum user can suggest something easier.