When I set the field size in report design view large enough to accomodate my longest data length, then when I have shorter data entries, there is a lot of white space after each entry. e.g. First Name and Last Name. How can I eliminate these white spaces so that the words look like they are typed like this not all the white space?

You can concatinate the fields for display purposes in the report. The trim() function removes any leading or trailing blanks and concatinates just one blank between the name parts.

= Trim(FirstName) & " " & Trim(LastName)