COUNTIFS - single range of cells, within a date range and matching a string

Question

I am trying to count the number of cells (in a column) that are between 1/1/2019 and 1/31/2019 that mention "Link*" in the cell next to it. My problem is that I cannot enter the date range, because COUNTIFS will not let me evaluate multiple criteria on 1 range of cells (which I need to do because of the date range).

This is the syntax I have that will not work.

=COUNTIFS(C2:C10,">= 1/1/2019", C2:C10,"<= 1/31/2019", D2:D10, "Link*")

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time!

Answer 1

The formula will work if you remove the space between the = and the date.

The function will try to make a date of anything that can be interpreted as a date, but by making the first character of the string to be evaluated a space, Excel cannot parse it as a date.

Try entering a space and then any date in a cell. Excel will see it as a text string and not parse it into a true date.

Remove the space and it will work:

=COUNTIFS(C2:C10,">=1/1/2019", C2:C10,"<=1/31/2019", D2:D10, "Link*")