Formula result shows "1" when cell it refers to is blank

[jojo101]

I'm trying to make a helper column of month number(Col F) to then make a column of monthly totals (Col G) using a formula like so =MONTH(LISA_INCOME[[#This Row],[DATE]])

Problem is that the column of dates does not have a date in each cell of that column, if there's a blank date the month number formula result shows "1"

Is there a way to adjust the above formula so that blank dates show blank months or even zero months so I can then maybe even use conditional formatting to hide the zero/blanks in the resulting month number column?

[FDibbins]

Maybe this...
=if(A1="","",MONTH(LISA_INCOME[[#This Row],[DATE]]))

(I used A1, you would use your own cell ref)

I would question why you need to extract the month number for this though, there may be other ways?

[Tony Valko]

Just some FYI...

An empty cell evaluates to 0.

0 is the date serial number for the date 1/0/1900 (m/d/yyyy). You didn't know there was a day 0? Well, there is in Excel!

So, 0 = month 1 (for January).

=MONTH(empty_cell) = 1