Comparing a data range against a range of dates

Hi all!

I think I am nearly there with this, but just need a bit of help with syntax. So, I have four columns of data, B to F, the cells of which hold one of seven key words. On my dashboard, I want to be able to calculate a cumulative total for each of these keywords for the life of the project, so I don't actually need a date range here, I just count the words. Easy. For example:

=COUNTIFS(Cumulative!$B$2:$F$999,"Keyword")

Counts the instance of "Keyword" on the range of cells B2:F999.

The problem comes when I then use a date range to calculate how many instances there are between 1/9/2022 and a recent reporting date for each monthly report; for this month it is 31/1/2023.

I have tried using:

=COUNTIFS(Cumulative!$H$2:$H$999, ">=&DATE(2022, 9, 1), Cumulative!$H$2:$H$999, "<=&DATE(2023, 1, 31), Cumulative!$B$2:$F$999,"Keyword")

The problem seems to be using the array for the data in multiple columns B to F to find "Keyword". Even if I add multiple lines and have four lots of criteria for individual columns, it still doesn't return the correct value.

Can you help? The one thing to add is that in that array containing the keywords, there are a large number of blank cells.