issue with simple countif formula

Grant Hamilton

on a sheet i have summaries which should count if month numbers in a column. it works on other sheets but not this one so am a bit dumbfounded.

the "month" column is a formula (=month @ row) basically telling me what the month was the shipment was created.

the summary is simply count records for each month.

=COUNTIF(month:month, =2) as an example and i get the response invalid data type.

invalid data type.docx

I have tried changing formula to =countif(month:month, ="2") and even "02" but same result.

Paul Newcome

If that error is present in even one cell within the referenced range, any formula (no matter how correct it is) will pull that error through.

That error can become present when using something like the MONTH function on a non-date or blank cell.

If your referenced column contains something like

=MONTH([Date Column Name]@row)

it will throw that error on blank rows which then pushes through to your summary formulas.

This can be corrected by using an IFERROR to remove the error message from the referenced column.

=IFERROR(MONTH([Date Column Name]@row), "")

However, if you are wanting to count how many dates are in (for example) January, you can evaluate the date column directly like so:

=COUNTIFS([DAte Column Name]:[Date Column Name], IFERROR(MONTH(@cell), 0) = 1)

And if you have multiple years in that column and only want to count for a specific year:

=COUNTIFS([Date Column Name]:[Date Column Name], AND(IFERROR(MONTH(@cell), 0) = 1, IFERROR(YEAR(@cell), 0) = 2026))