On document merge, fillable fields with the same name but different types get deleted

Hello,

We are currently deploying new versions of old fillable form PDF documents. As part of this, a number of fields for the same data have changed from drop-downs to simple text boxes as the data contents for these fields has gotten more complex and the drop-down options have become outdated.

The problem I am running into now is that when I am merging the new document with the old document, all the fields that have the same name and same type merge correctly and carry over the data (expected behavior), however whenever there is a mismatch between two fields of the same name but different types acrobat is simply deleting the fields on the new document.

Is there any way to prevent these fields from being deleted without renaming them or changing them to drop-downs? Ideally while also carrying the old data into the now not-deleted field names.