Finding similar but not identical values using COUNT and COUNTIF

Hi.
I tried to get help for this problem: http://www.excelforum.com/excel-work...-datasets.html but realized that I maybe posted a too extensive question.
Now I'm simplifying it and asking: What is wrong with this formula?
=COUNT(H5:H16)-COUNTIF(H5:H16;"<E5")-COUNTIF(H5:H16;">F5")
For some reason the formula is not recognizing my criteria (marked in red). How should I formulate them?

For the record: I want to find in a dataset values that are equal or close to value X. I use this formula to search within a dataset and use the -COUNTIFs to exclude data that are too far above or below my desired range.