cell references in "COUNTIFS" function

Hello. I'm a long time excel user, but this is my first post here.

I'm using the following countifs function:

=COUNTIFS('user data'!$B$3:$B$10000,$I4,'user data'!$C$3:$C$10000,">=7/23/2007",'user data'!$C$3:$C$10000,"<7/30/2007")

I'm trying to count all of the items for each user that were created between two dates. It would be much easier if I could replace the dates with cell references, but when I tried, the counts all went to zeros.

=COUNTIFS('user data'!$B$3:$B$10000,$I4,'user data'!$C$3:$C$10000,">=AS2",'user data'!$C$3:$C$10000,"<AT2")

I'm afraid I'm missing some small piece of syntax, (like not using quotes or something). Anyone know what the problem is here?

Thanks.

Try like this

=COUNTIFS('user data'!$B$3:$B$10000,$I4,'user data'!$C$3:$C$10000,">="&AS2,'user data'!$C$3:$C$10000,"<"&AT2)

daddylonglegs, you're my HEEEEEERO!!!!!

I never would have figured that out and could not find the answer anywhere online. Thank you, thank you, thank you.