[Tex/LaTex] Control column width with left alignment in tabular

horizontal alignmenttableswidth

I want to make a table with a bigger than default column width for the first column. The text in this column should be left aligned. Here is my code.

\begin{tabular}{llll|l}
Address1    &&&& Mobile: 888-000-0000 \\
Address2    &&&& Fax: 888-000-0000 \\
\end{tabular}

The first column (Address1, Address2) should have a larger width so that the second column (Mobile, Fax) is close to the right margin of the page. Now I just add in a lot of invisible columns so that there are more spaces between them. I wonder if there is a way to control the width of the first column.

Best Answer

There are quite a few ways to achieve your objective. One of them would be to use a tabular* environment instead of a tabular environment:

\begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{l @{\extracolsep{\fill}} l}
Address1    & Mobile: 888-000-0000 \\
Address2    & Fax: 888-000-0000 \\
\end{tabular*}

The somewhat intimidating-looking contruct @{\extracolsep{\fill}} serves to push the table's columns maximally far apart (while making the entire table still fit into a text block of width \textwidth).

Related Question