Excel Count If Formula Question

[Stumped]

I am making a workbook containing a summary worksheet for other worksheets for each month in the same workbook. In the summary worksheet I am using the COUNTIF formula to tally the occurrences of dropdown items on the other worksheets. A dropdown selection uses the < symbol (I formatted the cells on the worksheets as text). So when I enter the COUNTIF formula in my summary sheet, i.e., =COUNTIF(JAN!$E$2:$E$30,"< 37 wks") the tally is wrong. I'm not sure if the counting is getting thrown off because of the < symbol in my dropdown text. If so, how do I get Excel to NOT read < as a symbol?

 

[AmjiBhai]

Try replacing < with ? in your find criteria
=COUNTIF(JAN!$E$2:$E$30,"? 37 wks")