COUNTIF with OR blank cell, less than cell

I'm pulling a count of stores that were closed before a certain date, or still active (no close date). I can get it to count only the blanks, or only stores closed before the date, but not ones that are either or. Here's my best guess at it:

=COUNTIFS(Stores!$E:$E,Summary!B6,Stores!$G:$G,{"<="&$C$3,""})

Column E is store name, Column G is close date. I'm probably missing something simple here...

Try reversing the logic...

count the ones that ARE > C3, and subtract that from the Total
Logically, that will be equal to the ones that are <=C3 OR blank..

=COUNTIF(Stores!$E:$E,Summary!B6)-COUNTIFS(Stores!$E:$E,Summary!B6,Stores!$G:$G,">"&$C$3)

Thanks!! That logic worked! You rock.

FYI here's the final formula I used to find stores that closed between 2 periods. I added that to make it more dynamic to use, i.e. in the last 3 months, 12 months, etc.

=COUNTIFS('Stores'!$E:$E,'Summary'!B7)-COUNTIFS('Stores'!$E:$E,'Summary'!B7,'Stores'!$G:$G,"<="&$C$4)

where C3 is start of period and C4 is end of period.

Thx again

You're welcome.