you need to change the semicolon to a colon try
=sum($A$5:$C$8)

"General" wrote:

I had to construct the following using concatenate (and cell info):
=sum($A$5;$C$8)

Now that I have the text version of the formula, I need to have excel
calculate that formula. Here is where I am stuck. I tried multiplying by 1
to no avail.

Ideas please.