Maybe approaching this from the other end is easier.

With just the digit 5 in cell A1, you can display

(5 - Oranges)

with this formula

="("&text(A1,"#")&" - Oranges)"

Cell A1 is still a number that can be acted upon with all the Excel operators


" wrote:

Is there anyway that I can add two cells ie.

cell 1 - (5 - Oranges)
cell 2 - (6 - Grapes)

and get a sum of 11 in the third cell...i cant just use the sum
function because of the text being in the cells