COUNTIFS criteria is CELL+anything

Hi,

I've created a rather complicated cross-sheet formula that counts cells from a different sheet using 3 criterias. One is the description that starts with a text mentioned in a cell above. I've tried to enter the search criteria into the formula like this

=COUNTIFS({Other sheet Range 1},$Column$14 & * , ...)

=COUNTIFS({Other sheet Range 1},$Column$14 & "*" , ...)

=COUNTIFS({Other sheet Range 1},$Column$14 + * , ...)

=COUNTIFS({Other sheet Range 1},$Column$14 + "*" , ...)

None of them worked, what am I missing here? Is there a different "anything" variable used in smartsheet?

Best regards

Alex