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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T00:08:38+00:00

I have seen people use SUM in calcs when there is no need to

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I have seen people use SUM in calcs when there is no need to use it and I just assumed that they didn’t know what they were doing but I just downloaded a template from excel and they use it as well. So I am wondering maybe there is a good reason to do that and I am completely missing something.
Example:

=IF(SUM(A20)>0,SUM((A20*E20)-F20),"")

Why not just:

=IF(A20>0, (A20*E20)-F20, "")
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I see two reasons why people use sum in such situation:

    1. They just don’t know better
    2. As error prevention: if any of the cells contains a string, using them for any mathematical operation will result in an #VALUE! error. Wrapping it with SUMwill cast a string to a 0.

    While the latter has some use, it’s normally better to ensure consistent data – or handle it more explicit in the formula, e.g. IF(ISTEXT(A1),0,A1).

    I do not see any reason why someone would wrap the result of a formula in a SUM…

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