Flash Animation 13: Creating a Simple Preloader

Here's the important part; we're going to do something a little different with our symbol, because we're going to be referencing it by name in our ActionScripts. Symbols have instances: iterations of the original. Your original symbol is the symbol stored in your library; an instance is any copy of it dragged onto the stage. You can make edits that only affect specific instances, and you can also name those instances to differentiate them from each other when performing different actions upon them.

Look in the Properties bar, below the dropdown that labels the symbol as a Movie Clip. Here is where you'll type a name for this specific instance; I named mine Loader.