The answers are being stored as text, which prevents me from working with them as numbers in Excel.

I've created several Forms where I ask questions that require numeric answers. I've already set a restriction to accept only numbers, which works well. However, when I export the responses to Excel and try to use the =SUM function to add up the answers, I find that the numbers are stored as text (e.g., '2000), so I'm unable to sum them. Is there a way to change this so that the numbers are formatted correctly for calculations?

What are the possible solutions to fix this issue?