What do you expect COUNTIF() to report?

If you want to count the number of dates in 1998, one way:

=COUNTIF(A:A,"<"&DATE(1999,1,1))-COUNTIF(A:A,"<"&DATE(1998,1,1))

or

=SUMPRODUCT(--(YEAR(A1:A10000)=1998))

In article ,
Jock wrote:

Dates in a column are formatted thus: 18/06/2007.
How can I adapt the COUNTIF formula to look at these dates (going back to
1986) and report back on the year part?
Any ideas?