How to group by month from Date field using sql

Question

How can I group only by month from a date field (and not group by day)?

Here is what my date field looks like:

2012-05-01

Here is m

Answer 1

I used the FORMAT function to accomplish this:

select
 FORMAT(Closing_Date, 'yyyy_MM') AS Closing_Month
 , count(*) cc 
FROM
 MyTable
WHERE
 Defect_Status1 IS NOT NULL
 AND Closing_Date >= '2011-12-01'
 AND Closing_Date < '2016-07-01' 
GROUP BY FORMAT(Closing_Date, 'yyyy_MM')
ORDER BY Closing_Month