excel countifs mystery

[excelmaffia]

Hi all,

I recently started using excel for my studies. I have been using countifs formulas but now i am stuck.

I was calculating the amount of people in a certain age range by using =COUNTIFS(VolvoOceanAllData[Year of birth];">1936";VolvoOceanAllData[Year of birth];"<1951").

Every time i entered the formula, excel couldnt work with it, kept marking the quotation marks.
I asked my teachers advise, who entered the formula in her document, where it worked. She sent her document to me, and i copied the formula from her document (WHICH WAS EXACTLY THE SAME) to mine. I inserted the formula and it worked, but when I manually copy the formula and write it myself, it does not work.

I have no clue what the problem is, it almost seems like my hands typing the formula are not suited for excel :))))

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@excelmaffia 

1. Make sure that you use straight quotes "..." and not curly (or smart) quotes “...”
2. Are you sure that you use semi-colon ; as list separator? This is usually combined with comma as decimal separator. If you use point as decimal separator, you should probably use comma as list separator.

[#3]

Apparently the quotes were the problem, thank you!! On my keyboard there are no different types of quotes, but on the screen there are (when i use shift). Try to see the difference between these two... " ''. Anyway, problem solved, thanks again :)