MS Excel / VBA help thread

I have two columns in a sheet that I want to make a chart from; dates and names.

I want to display the number of names for each month - i.e.

01/03/2024 / Donald
29/03/2024 /Mitt
31/03/2024 / John
31/05/2024 / George
28/06/2024 / Bob
31/12/2024 / George
31/12/2025 / Ronald
29/12/2027 / Gerald

Gives me

Mar-24 / 3
May-24 / 1
Jun-24 / 1
Dec-24 / 1
Dec-25 / 1
Dec-27 / 1

(I actually want to put some other stuff in the graph, but that doesn't matter for now)

These names and dates may change over time, so to me it seems to make sense to have a 2nd table with a list of all the months between my first and last date, and then a formula to return the result. Then set the chart settings to ignore null months.

Initially I wanted a pivot to do it which I could refresh, but the problem is, that if I add 'Months' then it will count 3 for 'Dec', not 1 for Dec-24, 1 for Dec-25, 1 for Dec-27. If I do it by full date, then I still need a way to do the count, so what is the point of adding a pivot chart to the mix?

Questions are;

1. Is there a pivot trick I am missing to give me what I want?
   
2. wtf is going wrong with my formula that is returning the incorrect count for counting Jan-24?
   =COUNTIFS('sheet1'!E3:E52, ">=01/01/2024", 'sheet1'!E3:E52, "<=31/01/2024")
   
   
   

Cheers