On Jul 2, 1:32 pm, Toppers wrote:
="The Number of Occurences Reported is " & E38
You don't need SUM

That's what I also used to say. Then I realized that when E38
contains text, =SUM(E8) results in zero, whereas =E38 results in the
text. Likewise, =SUM(A1,A2) works, whereas =A1+A2 results in a #VALUE
error if A1 or A2 contains text. If the purpose is to always produce
a numeric result, there is a difference.

On the other hand, arguably =N(E38) is more to the point than
SUM(E38). And I see no value in some of the more debatable uses of
SUM(), e.g. SUM(A1+A2).

Marie, you might want to consider the following:

="The number of occurrences is " & text(n(E38), "0")

if you want to control the format of E38 in the formula. "#" would
result in a blank if E38 is zero or text; "0" ensures at least a
zero. On the other hand, no such format control is necessary if you
are sure that E38 will be an integer (or text).