Control column width with left alignment in tabular

Question

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.

Answer 1

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).

Answer 2

Here's a quick-and-dirty solution with tabularx:

\usepackage{tabularx}
...
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{X|l}
Address1 & Mobile: 888-000-0000 \\
Address2 & Fax: 888-000-0000 \\
\end{tabularx}

But bear in mind that it's prettier without the vertical bar.

Answer 3

You can use the package tabu. You adjust the width of each column by changing the value 5 and 2.5 inside the brackets. You may also change the alignment from left to right or centred, by changing lto r(or c). Here is your table:

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tabu}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabu} to \linewidth {X[5,l]|X[2.5,l]}
Address1    & Mobile: 888-000-0000 \\
Address2    & Fax: 888-000-0000 \\
\end{tabu}
\end{document}

This gives: