Many thanks for your reply
The value of Textbox1 will either be "-" or numeric
if I change the formula to read
=iif(reportitems!Textbox1.value="-","Not A Number",reportitems!Textbox1.value-1) i still receive the same error as before. but this time in reverse it shows "Not a Number" when the value of Textbox1 is "-" and #Error for the sum if I remove the -1 then it displays correctly