flash actionscript: yo i know i must sound like an idiot, but im kinda havin issues with
tellTarget. i know how to use it with movie clips on the _root timeline and
movie clips that are already housing the movieclip or frame with the
actionscript. but whenever i try to tellTarget to a movie clip that is not on
the _root timeline or isnt housing the actionscript, it never works. how would
you do that. say i want to tell a movie clip with an instance name of 123 that
is inside an mc called ABC to stop. thanks to anyone who can help!

rather than just "saying" that you want to tell a movie clip with an instance
name of 123 that is inside an mc called ABC to stop. why don't you show the
code exactly. Because for a start, you can't give an instance name starting
with a number (or at least shouldn't)...

what version of Flash are you using?

thank you for replying. i was just using the 123 thing as an example but
anyway... the mc that im trying to play is just called "bar" and it is inside
an mc called "focusbar" Also i know that i can just use bar.play(); instead of
the whole tellTarget thing. anyway the actionscript is just bar.play();
i guess there's something more i should be doing... (note: the frame
housing this actionscript is inside of another mc [called "shooter"]) anyway
thanks if you can help.

so if I am understanding you have a movieClip called focusBar and a clip inside
that called bar

then you have another clip called shooter and this is also on the _root
timeline at the same relative level to focusBar

so from shooter we need this

this._parent.focusBar.bar.play();

this tells shooter to go up one parent level then into focusBar and tell bar
to play.

hope that helps;
cheers,