Passing Calculated Variable Back to LMS

I've tried the survey questions - this process (at the bottom) doesn't work because the Short Answer question won't recognize the variable as a TextEntry (I'm guessing because it's a number?) I tried to do the same thing using a How Many survey question, which does allow me to replace the NumericEntry variable with my "Total". However, when I preview, it always asks for an entry and won't even progress onto the results slide. I've also tried to insert the variable into the box, but no luck doing that either.