An invaluable tool I have been using for the last year or so is Texter. Developed by Lifehacker (also a great blog in itself) it saves you loads of time by replacing a pre-defined abbreviation with text as you type.

How it works: Texter monitors what you type. When you type in a pre-defined series of keystrokes (a ‘hotstring’), Texter replaces those characters with a longer section of text. For example, if your company name is Primatech Paper Company, you could set up a hotstring of ppc. When you type ppc, Texter replaces it with Primatech Paper Company.

Texter works with any Windows application.

An example I use at work is below.

Tip: To avoid inadvertently inserting expanding text mid-word I use the full stop (or period) before all of my hotstrings. It is unlikely that I’ll type a key sequence of a full stop and then a letter directly after it and not want it expanded.