Align Left and Right in Same Cell

[Sloth]

I am trying to align the first names to the left of the cell and the last
names to the right (don't ask me why). I know one way but it requires a
custom number format for each entry. Is the another method anyone here can
suggest to get the same thing without using a custom number format.

Here's how I currently do it.
Say I want "Patrick Stewart" to look like this...
Patrick Stewart
I enter Patrick in the cell and then apply the following custom number
format..
@* "Stewart"
and align the cell to the left.
the "* " tells excel to enter as many spaces as it can to fill the cell.

This method works if I have one or two names in the list I want to do this
with, but it gets cumbersome after more than a handful.

 

[Bernard Liengme]

Why not have first-name in A and second-name in B ?
You can hide the gridlines!
best wishes

 

[Tyro]

You can apply your format to the first cell and then use format painter and
drag it down to apply to all cells.

Tyro

 

[Sloth]

Well I am trying to do a list like this (I hope the aligning comes through)

Jack Thompson
Patrick Stewart
Tom Reallylonglastname
Longfirstname lastname

basically I want the long names to extend into the other columns. Your
method ends up like this. It's not a "bad" thing, it just isn't what I want
for this particular list.

Jack Thompson
Patrick Stewart
Tom Reallylonglastname
Longfirstname lastname

 

[Sloth]

all the names are different so they can't have the same format.

 

[Dupatt]

I am not an expert and I am not sure that this is a proper fix for your
problem but it works.

At the top of the column that will contain your names, click to highlight
the whole column, then right click and chose format cells, Alignment, on
Horizontal select Distributed(Indent). Go back and right click the
highlighted column again and select "column width" and set it for the
longest name you expect to have (this can be changed if you find you have
longer names later).
The column will adjust for the shorter names but it will wrap for longer
ones.
Just another user of Excel 2003.
Pat