[F5] Editing text after converting to symbol?

[Flashpowder]

Hello,

I am new to Flash (using Flash 5 specifically) and just started using it about 10 days ago. I have progressed quite a bit in that time, but it has been a steep learning curve. I come from an extensive Photoshop and Illustrator background, but had never used Flash before.

I am designing a flash website, and I want to have some side-scrolling text in my flash movie. I would like to be able to edit this text at least once a month, and completely change what it says. If I am correct, it appears that if I want to animate my text and have it scrolling, I must convert the text to a symbol first, before I can animate it. So, I converted the text to a symbol, and I was then able to animate it the way I wanted. AFTER doing this, when I try to select the symbol text, right click and click EDIT, I am unable to edit the text (change what the text says)..

Is there a way to do this? Or must I delete the old text symbol, recreate the text from scratch and reconvert it to a symbol and reanimate it all over again, each time I want to change what it says? I am hoping there is some way to edit it once I have set up my animation of it.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide,

Steve

[Flashpowder]

It looks like I finally figured this out on my own! When I converted my text to a symbol, a new copy of the text was created in the "Library" as a symbol, and my original text object was also still in the library. When I right clicked and hit edit on the original text object, I could edit that text, and it automatically updated the symbol version of the text.

When you view the properties on the two versions of the text in the library, they look identical (both movie clips). There is nothing that seems to say that one is a symbol and the other isn't. So, for identification purposes, the only way I could tell them apart was that they had different names in the library.

Guess that is how you do it... Unless anybody knows something different?

Steve

[lordlupin]

You're right, naming things is important!

is something is a button give it an identifier at the end of the name e.g. something_button or something_movie or something_graphic.

in the library you will see a different logo depending on what type of object it is and it should say that it is a 'button', 'graphic', 'movie clip', 'sound' etc.

if you drop a 'movie clip' object on to the desktop where you build your flash movie and then change it to a 'graphic' using the properties section it will still say it is a 'movie clip' in your library. This can make things confusing so you need to keep on top of things like that and make sure that you convert the new version of the clip to a 'graphic' in your library using the 'Convert to Symbol...' option in the 'Modify' pull-down menu at the top of the screen.

it gets easier after a while...

;-)