flash (macromedia): I created a button by converting a shape.

I put in a layer for navigation and gave one of the keyframes an instance name
of "Missouri"

I have entered a stop comment that prevents the movie from advancing past a
few frames into the 'show'.

The up, over and down states are all the same on the button and when I run it
(Cntrl + Enter), the button presents itself as a button and I get the hand that
seems to indicate that it is recognized as a button.

I put the following code ON THE BUTTON itself...

on (press) {
gotoAndPlay("Missouri");
}

When I click the button while it is running, nothing happens. I did the exact
same steps on another button that I created using Flash Drawn shapes (this one
was a .JPG that I converted to a button) and it works fine.

I am completely stumped! Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

where is the button and where is the frame named "Missouri"? are they all on the same timeline?

They are both on the same timeline in the same file, but are contained within
different folders. The update is that I went back in, recreated the button and
now it mysteriously works.

Now a follow on question that you may be able to help me with...I cannot
change the color of the button in the different states. I made sure the fill
isn't locked. Yet another puzzle...

it sounds like you were doing everything correctly for the first problem, and
that it is solved now. note that however you are organizing your artwork in the
library has nothing to do with how these objects function on the timeline.

regarding your follow up question, you need to edit the button and make the
artwork in the different states correspond to the up, over, down and hit frames.