Edate returning 12-2004 from blank cells

[kimmymae]

I am using 2010 and have two columns: "testing performed" & "testing due". I am using Edate to return a date of five years in the future from the date in "testing performed". However, if the "testing performed" cell is blank, it returns a result of "12-2004" in the corresponding "testing due" cell.

I have tried to make a conditional formatting New Rule of 'if testing performed is =0 then fill the cell with beige' so the erroneous date is not seen, but, am unsuccessful. I have tried the New Rule on either cell. Any ideas? I would think this would be a simple task, but then I have not used Excel for many many years and may just be missing the obvious :-)

[benishiryo]

hi kimmymae, welcome to the forum. why not just do an IF formula to show blank if the 1st column is blank?

=IF(A2="","",EDATE(A2,12*5))

is that what you need?

[kimmymae]

Perfect, thank you!! I had tried IF but was putting a space between the quotes and tried "blank" but got errors. Thanks so much!!