It is a known issue that if the auto-completion window activates while in the process of typing in a code template abbreviation, that the code template will not be expanded from its abbreviation. The activation of auto-completion overrides the code template expansion process.

While helping someone overcome this issue we, surprisingly, found that even if auto-completion popups were disabled, they were still preventing (overriding, short-circuiting) the code template expansion process from happening.

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4604740/vdoc-for-php-in-netbeans-6-9-1-seems-not-working/4606248#4606248 -- especially the discussion in the comments below the accepted answer.

Expected behavior: if Auto Popup Completion Window is unchecked (i.e., disabled), then the expectation is that all of auto-completion is disabled and therefore should have no effect on other related processes such as code template expansion.

Actual behavior: if Auto Popup Completion Window is unchecked, then the auto-completion process can still prevent (short-circuit, override) the code template process from expanding an abbreviation. Even with Auto Popup Completion Window disabled, one must set completion-auto-popup-delay to a duration long enough to type a code template abbreviation and get it expanded before the auto-completion popup would otherwise have displayed itself.

The surprising thing here is that completion-auto-popup-delay still has any affect on the behavior of the editor when Auto Popup Completion Window is disabled. Disabled should mean all aspects of the feature are disabled, not simply that the popup does not happen after the delay expires.