Counting number of occurences specific date in range of cells in a table

[jzzman]

I have a table set-up to track data. Cells A3:A59 contain a date (formatted like January 17, 1994). I need to calculate number of times the word of each month occurs in those cells (i.e. January, February, etc)
I have the date in each cell and am already counting the number of occurences each year shows up, but can't get the month to count.
Is it because it's in a table? I have tried using several formulas.
Here's one example.
=COUNTIF(A3:A59,"*january*")

Cell A3 contains ='Description Log'!A2 which is January 17, 1994.

It is not counting the number of times january shows up. I want the data in order by year, so it's not good sorting by month.


Any ideas what is wrong or how I can count this correctly?

Thanks,
Jzzman

[JBeaucaire]

The word "January" is most likely NOT the value in that cell, it's probably 34351, the Excel numeric value for that date. Most likely, the cells are simply formatted to display the verbiage. It's not really there.

To count how many times "January" is in the table, do a:

=SUMPRODUCT(--(MONTH(A3:A59)=1))