A more concise way to format COUNT result with thousands separator?

Goal Format a `COUNT` result to a common format (e.g. `###,##0`) in a concise statement and without UDF's. I've Tried I am currently using something like this, though it leaves two decimals and is clunky: ``` SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR, CAST(COUNT([id]) AS MONEY), 1) FROM tbl ``` The reason I went that direction is because it was the only standard formatting option I could find when reading through the CAST and CONVERT documentation from MSDN. I don't really like it, but it limps along since these numbers are simply copied and pasted into other text editors and such after the T-SQL runs. They do of course have to be formatted by hand to remove the decimals in some places. Research and Restrictions Of course you could build a user-defined function, like this one on this blog, but I have a restriction that keeps me from building UDF's for this purpose. After some additional research I found that if I were using SQL 2012 I could use a new T-SQL `FORMAT` function, alas, I'm restricted to 2008 R2. This of course leverages a different platform as it's a .NET interface. :D I am also aware of this solution: Format a number with commas but without decimals in SQL Server 2008 R2?