COUNTIFS with a column containing the words "true" and "false"

Hi All,

I am new here, and a fairly novice Excel programmer (Excel 2010). I am trying to have one spreadsheet (that will be used to generate a report) search another spreadsheet (where the raw data will be) and count how many times the word true appears corresponding with a date range. Here is what I mean:

I want excel to count how many times the word "True" appears in Column Y that corresponds to the date range of 01/01/12 - 01/31/12.

Here is the formula I am using so far, and it continues to return zero. I am assuming it has something to do with the word "true" having a different meaning as a logical expression within excel? This formula has worked for me when I was looking for "c" in a different column, so I am bit confused.

Column A contains dates in mm/dd/yy format. Column Y contains "True" and "False" intermittently (depending on the data in that particular row). I need to count the "True" in January.

=COUNTIFS(Y:Y,"True",A:A,">=01/01/12")-COUNTIFS(Y:Y,"True",A:A,">01/31/12")

Any help would be most appreciated.

P.S. I can't use a pivot table because of how I need the information to display. Thanks!