Simple Countif producing wrong results

[ItalianPlatinum]

Would someone be able to diagnose why the below would yield bad results? If i do a simple excel E1 = E2 it says false. Yet the countif formula pairs them as a set? What am I not understanding? My dataset is very large. I got this formula from a prior thread Formula to match criteria. It should work in my perspective but doesn't and causing ton of false exceptions for me

Book2
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1	Identifier	Open Date	Cost	Rounded to 2	For Matching	Formula
2	123456789	9/20/2019	$ 148.59501	$ 148.60000	12345678943728148.6	2
3	123456789	9/20/2019	$ 148.59000	$ 148.59000	12345678943728148.59	2	FALSE
4	123456789	2/7/2020	$ 149.21500	$ 149.22000	12345678943868149.22	2
5	123456789	2/7/2020	$ 149.21000	$ 149.21000	12345678943868149.21	2	FALSE
6	123456789	4/11/2023	$ 134.02000	$ 134.02000	12345678945027134.02	2
7	123456789	4/11/2023	$ 134.02000	$ 134.02000	12345678945027134.02	2	TRUE
8	123456789	4/12/2023	$ 133.95000	$ 133.95000	12345678945028133.95	4
9	123456789	4/12/2023	$ 133.95000	$ 133.95000	12345678945028133.95	4	TRUE
10	123456789	4/12/2023	$ 133.95000	$ 133.95000	12345678945028133.95	4
11	123456789	4/12/2023	$ 133.95000	$ 133.95000	12345678945028133.95	4	TRUE
Sheet1

Cell Formulas
Range	Formula
D2:D11	D2	=ROUND(C2,2)
E2:E11	E2	=A2&B2&D2
F2:F11	F2	=COUNTIF($E$2:$E$11,$E$2:$E$11)
G3,G11,G9,G7,G5	G3	=E2=E3

 

[Cubist]

COUNTIF only uses the first 15 digits, anything else is converted to 0. Try add a hyphen in front.

=COUNTIF($E$2:$E$11,CHAR(173)&E2)

 

[ItalianPlatinum]

Oh I did not know that. what is CHAR doing forcing it to a string? Hyphen also worked. This also worked too =A2&B2&D2&Char(160)

 

[ItalianPlatinum]

Also this cut my formula calculation time by 50%, why is that so? Before it took 7min to calculate 1mil rows with that formula now with that hyphen its down to 3mins.

 

[Cubist]

I don't know why it would cut down the time. Maybe others have an idea.