What´s your hardware configuration?
Where, a computer? SD card reader? Which OS?
Generally (any) card should be formated directly in the phone using the Android format option at ->settings->storage->erase SD card.
Try reading through this.
If it happens that it´s not recognised at all by a conventional computer/reader maybe it´s faulty and also there is a noticeable amount of fake sd cards on the market also among brand types. If you like to read more about this little known fact.
To reveal those you could try the freeware windows tool “h2testw_1.4”.
Furthermore in some rare cases it could be that there is no partition available and the card is totally blank (maybe raw formated).
Here you have to use a partitioning tool such as e.g. Easus Partition Manager.
Maybe Windows 7+ offers such a tool as well meanwhile.
Have a look through this list. Most Sandisk cards should work flawless, see if yours is listed here as compatible.
@AnotherElk
A bit quicker again…seems like my keyboard meanwhile outperforms my old machine with outworn 2x2GHz cpu…