They don't have instance names, but the library object is named "mainButton"
for example.

I've been looking at examples for looping through objects (which I just
found), but I haven't figured out how to differentiate these particular objects
from others. I need to do it for all instances of mainButton inside a
particular movieclip (but not the whole timeline).

are there any other buttons in that movieclip? are there any textfields and
any objects (defined by something=new Object() ) in that movieclip. if the
answer is no, we're in business. if the answer is yes, but there are a
managably small number of other buttons, textfields and objects, we're still in
business.

I'm sure this is easy, just haven't found how to do it.

Say you have 4000 instances of a particular button used in a movie, and you
want to disable all of them from being clicked based on some other button. How
can you do this?

Thanks anyway - I found another reply of yours somewhere else about looping
through objects and testing for what they are, using typeof and instanceof, and
I was able to accomplish what I needed.

Also, a really stupid way of blocking every button is to just put a
movie-sized button that does nothing over the whole thing, and make it _visible
or not. You can even tell the button myButton .useHandCursor = false, in which
case it doesn't respond to mouseovers, but just blocks every button that's
underneath it.