Formula conversion from date string to numbers

Hello everyone,

The below formula works fine for what I want to do:

=SUMIFS(Accounts!$N$1104:Accounts!$N$5000,Accounts!$E$1104:Accounts!$E$5000,"*December**2017*",Accounts!$K$1104:Accounts!$K$5000,"*Accountancy*")

The problem with my formula is that it searches for the month and year as a string “*December**2017*” etc. as the date is entered as 8th December 2017. This is fine but I need to input the date as a number now 08/12/2017 and not a string. I tried to update the formula myself using sum product but was not able to get it working. Is there any way that my formula can be changed so that it checks for the month and year as numbers and not a string? So instead of the date being input as lets say 8th December 2017 it will be put in as 08/12/2017 and the formula will work as it does now?

My page has a lot of formulas set up like this that need to be changed but I just need to know how to do it on one so I change all of the others.

Thank you in advance for any help.

Regards,

Margate : )