You have a couple of options. You could use the sum function.
=SUM(A1)
it will return 0, if the cell is text.

There may be other workarounds depending on the formula you want, and
depending on what you mean by "ignore". Post some of them and it might help
us understand a little better.

"Sally" wrote:

I have formula strings that include cells that can contain numbers or text.
Can I (easily) create calculations that ingnore text occurances rather than
returning a '#VALUE!'