Unusual formula? Meaningful or not?

[au2010]

From a vendor work with, I received an Excel file with formulas giving the product of two other cells - for example, cell C3 should be the product of cells A3 and B3. But instead of simply using the formula =A3*B3, the vendor used the following:

=SUM(A3*B3).

I don't think I've ever seen that before. Does the "SUM" formula have any meaning or function in this case? It gives the correct result, but it doesn't seem to do anything that =A3*B3 couldn't do. I can't decide if this is something so advanced that I've never seen it before, or if it just means that my vendor doesn't know much about Excel. My guess is the latter, but I'm not certain.

Any ideas?

Thank you.

 

[Joe4]

I don't think I've ever seen that before. Does the "SUM" formula have any meaning or function in this case?
...
I can't decide if this is something so advanced that I've never seen it before, or if it just means that my vendor doesn't know much about Excel.

I have seen many people do it. It is the later of the two. It is usually a tip-off that the person doesn't quite know that much about Excel.
As you can see, it is totally unnecessary and adds nothing of value (and can be confusing).

My favorite is when I see something like this:
=SUM(A1+B1+C1)

 

[Michael M]

I thought that was a throwback to Lotus 1-2-3 !!

 

[jtakw]

Hi,

I've used the SUM function to avoid #VALUE error in case there's Text in the cells, like SUM(A1) or SUM(A1:A2), but the sample pointed out by OP and Joe4 just don't make sense.

BTW, I've been asked why SUM(A1:A2) when you can just A1+A2, the reason is as I stated earlier.

 

[au2010]

So, as I suspected, it just means my vendor doesn't know much about Excel. Thanks for the replies and suggestions.

 

[steve the fish]

Hi,

I've used the SUM function to avoid #VALUE error in case there's Text in the cells, like SUM(A1) or SUM(A1:A2), but the sample pointed out by OP and Joe4 just don't make sense.

BTW, I've been asked why SUM(A1:A2) when you can just A1+A2, the reason is as I stated earlier.

Im not sure i can think of any time when i would want to avoid an error when summing two cells that excel couldnt sum. Surely the error is more appropriate.

 

[shg]

Im not sure i can think of any time when i would want to avoid an error when summing two cells that excel couldnt sum.

	A​	B​	C​
1​	Value​	Cumu​
2​	2​	#VALUE!​	B2: =A2+B1
3​	3​	#VALUE!​
4​	5​	#VALUE!​
5​
6​	Value​	Cumu​	​
7​	2​	2​	B7: =SUM(A7,B6)
8​	3​	5​
9​	5​	10​