Auto Formatting Cells

I have a sheet that displays the output from various reports. I have a dropdown menu on one cell, that changes the output on a series of other cells based on matching the criteria from the dropdown menu to a "Title" cell on the main reports sheet. The problem I am having is that some cells return either a text value a date value. This causes me formatting issues. IF the cells are date formatted, the "text" result displays "1/1/1900" the default date value. If the cells are text formatted, then "date" results returns the serial number, not formatted to date.