copying an absolute value of a formula to a separate cell?

[dtruhe]

I am trying to determine the number of items in a changing range that are between a changing high and low number. - I have a list of current POs that are actively being worked on and a list of POs that work has completed. I am trying to find a way to find the total number of POs (both active and completed) that are between the highest and lowest active PO numbers.

=MAX and =MIN works for the active list of POs

=COUNTIFS only seems to work if the criteria is a number not a nested formula

[#2]

@dtruhe 

Can you provide a more specific description? COUNTIFS should work with expressions (formulas) in the criteria arguments too.

[#3]

@Hans Vogelaar 

Here is the formula that is not working. It returns a value of 0

=COUNTIFS(WIP!C3:C183,">=(C37)",WIP!C3:C183,"<=(C36)")

WIP is Work in Progress page in the same folder

C37 and C36 are =MIN(WIP!C3:C48) and =MAX(WIP!C3:C48) which return the highest and lowest values of current work in progress

I have tried putting the MIN MAX formulas in place of C37 and C36 and it still returns a value of 0

Hans thank you in advance for your help with this.

[#4]

@dtruhe 

Thanks! Try this version, with the cell references taken outside the quoted strings:

=COUNTIFS(WIP!C3:C183,">="&C37,WIP!C3:C183,"<="&C36)

[#5]

That was it! Thank you! and, this may be a stupid question but, what do the ampersands do in front of C37 and C36

[#6]

@dtruhe 

& concatenates (combines) values. For example, "Broc"&"coli" results in "Broccoli".

">="&C37 concatenates ">=" with the value of cell C37.

On the other hand, ">=(C37)" returns the literal text string ">=(C37)"; it does not use the value of cell C37.

[#7]

Awesome, thanks again!