"T. Valko" wrote in message
...
Excel is kind of picky when you refer to a date in a formula and there's
also the issue of date ambiguity.

<snip

As a last resort (I don't like this method!):

=COUNTIFS(H$3:H$398,""&--"2008/11/18",J$3:J$398,"0")

You don't need the double unary and this ISO standard format is the best IMO

=COUNTIFS(H$3:H$398,"2008-11-18",J$3:J$398,"0")