Resolved Excel countif formula -will not work with cell reference

Hi Everyone

I'm trying to get a countif formula to work in an excel spreadsheet, but it keeps giving me 0 as the count, which I know is the wrong count.

The spreadsheet is being used to record information on sales, and the page that has the details of past sales has a section for the percentage of sales over and under target. I am wanting to have the countif look at a particular cell for the criteria so it is easy for the user to change the sales target. I typed the formula as =countif(O14:O39, "<L7 ") but it returns zero as the count, i have L7 set to £1100 currently, but no matter what value i change the cell value to, it stays as a count of zero. If I replace L7 with 1100 in the countif formula, it gives me a count of 8, so I know the rest of it is right, i'm just unsure whether excel will do countifs when the criteria is a cell reference.

Does anyone know how to make this work?

Thanks ^_^

 

Use this formula:

=COUNTIF(O14:O39, "< "&L7)

 

Thanks ^_^, that's saved me alot of work redoing my sheet