I have an interactive Flash that allows the viewer to click on various buttons
to access different information. They all work fine.

The problem is in the final scene, accessed by a button command. When I test
the scene by itself, the animation runs fine. When I test the whole file,
however, none of the animation shows up; it just displays a static image of the
background.

Any suggestions?

don't use the goto functions and don't use scene information for navigation. use the goto methods and frame labels. for example:

:confused;Okay, I am a complete and total idiot! I used the code (I think I did
it right), but I can't get it to actually go to the next scene now. ARRGGHH!

Where do I need to be putting the code? Does it go in the action script for
the button? (That's where I put it, but I'm still not sure if I did it right.)

Thanks for your help!

you need to do 2 things:

1. label the frame that you want to which you want to navigate.
2. use that label within quotes in a _root.goto method that's either attached
to your button (and uses something like on(press) ) or attached to a frame and
uses the button name (something like button1.onPress=function() )