[FIXED] Why does Sheets/Excel allow entering in SUMing cells with string values but not strings themselves?

Issue

I've noticed the following:

Basically, I can do:

=SUM(range)

When that includes a cell, and also the individual cells:

=SUM(cell1, cell2, ...)

But when I enter in the literal values it gives me an error if they're not all numeric:

=SUM(val1, val2, val3)

Why is this so?

Solution

in google sheets, if you want to pass a text string as an argument you can do:

=SUM(10, 20, 30, N("Hello"))

some people tend to use this in their complex formulae (not just SUM) as notes

Answered By - player0

Answer Checked By - Candace Johnson (PHPFixing Volunteer)