Countif Function not counting correctly

Question

Hello,

I am running into an issue when using COUNTIF and I am not sure what I am missing. It is not counting the correct number of cells that is before the date that I have selected. (FYI the formula is returning 25)

As you can see, I want it to return the number 35 since there are 35 cells that have values in the, before that date.

Maybe there is another way I can go about this. Really what I am trying to do is find a month-end date i.e. 2018-12-31 and find the value on that date or the most recent value that comes before that date. So I need to look up the month-end date value and return the corresponding data point that will be beside that column. If there is no month-end date in that data, then return the most prior data point. (IE looking for May 31, and there is no May 31 in the data set, and the most recent previous data point is May 16, then return that value.)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Less than?

=Countif(B2:B1001,"<="&E2)