Flash issue: text fading doesn't work

[mac338]

G'day.
I'm working in Flash, unfortunately. Don't ask why, because I don't know myself but it's not my decision.

Either way, I'm having issues with the simple action of fading text, something I've done a few times before successfully.
Here's what I've done: I've pasted some text into Flash, then converted it to a symbol (I've tried graphic and movie clip)
Then I create one keyframe, go roughly 10 keyframes ahead and create another keyframe. I take down the alpha on the second keyframe, select all the frames and choose 'motion tween'.
I do not get an arrow between the frames though, (it looks like this: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/ZT7mscp.jpg[/IMG]) and the text doesn't fade. Any ideas what I could be doing wrong?

[Shadow801]

I find this can be quite strange to get right.

What I do is create the first keyframe and then add the amount of frames I want it to take afterwards.

Then I create the motion tweet (classic) on the first frame and you will notice that each frame afterwards now has a small dot on it. Only then do I click on one of the frames that are not blue with dots in and create a keyframe ready for alpha to be applied.

This shouldn't be the way to do it (and is as far as I know not documented this way) but I find creating the keyframes before the motion tween seems to be temperamental when I do it.

Granted, these days I never use Flash and if I do all my animation is done through ActionScript, but that's beside the point.

[KmartSqrl]

Select everything in the second keyframe and delete it, then select everything in the first keyframe and hit ctrl+c to copy it. Then select the second keyframe again and hit ctrl+shift+v to paste it in place and have at it. Sometimes the second keyframe ends up being a 'different' thing and flash has issues tweening because it doesn't know what is what and the copy+paste in place generally helps with that.

Make sure that the symbol you are trying to tween is the only thing on that layer during the tween as well.

[editline]3rd April 2013[/editline]

Holy shit I forgot how much I actually know about flash haha

[editline]3rd April 2013[/editline]

Also, the new style motion tweens are totally better once you get used to them.

[P1raten]

Classic tweens all the way.

[mac338]

Thanks guys. I figured it out. I have no idea what I did, but I did it right.