Here's my problem - I ahe a short column of dates, different dates sorted
ascending from 2000 to 2006. Different dates. I am seeking (in vain so far) a
formula that will count the dates by last 4 digits, i.e. "2001" and give me
the count.

I tried a bunch of stuff so far with no effing luck. Like:

=COUNTIF(D2:D271,"*2001")
=SUMPRODUCT(D1:D271)="*2002" result: FALSE

In the past, I found out (after much research & wastage of temporal
resources) that Excel just won't do some stuff, and I suspect this is one of
those things.

Any suggestions? If you can answer this, I bow to your impressive knowledge!

Mark
aka Brainless (from working on worksheets too much)