A symbol is a graphic, button, or movie clip that you create once in the Animate (formerly Flash Professional CC) authoring environment or by using the SimpleButton (AS 3.0) and MovieClip classes. You can then reuse the symbol throughout your document or in other documents.

A symbol can include artwork that you import from another application. Any symbol that you create automatically becomes part of the library for the current document.

An instance is a copy of a symbol located on the Stage or nested inside another symbol. An instance can be different from its parent symbol in color, size, and function. Editing the symbol updates all of its instances, but applying effects to an instance of a symbol updates only that instance.

Using symbols in your documents dramatically reduces file size; saving several instances of a symbol requires less storage space than saving multiple copies of the contents of the symbol. For example, you can reduce the file size of your documents by converting static graphics, such as background images, into symbols and then reusing them. Using symbols can also speed SWF file playback, because a symbol needs to be downloaded to Flash® Player only once.

Share symbols among documents as shared library assets during authoring or at runtime. For runtime shared assets, you can link assets in a source document to any number of destination documents, without importing the assets into the destination document. For assets shared during authoring, you can update or replace a symbol with any other symbol available on your local network.

If you import library assets with the same name as assets already in the library, you can resolve naming conflicts without accidentally overwriting existing assets.

Additional introductory instruction about symbols is available from these resources:

Types of symbols

Each symbol has a unique Timeline and Stage, complete with layers. You can add frames, keyframes, and layers to a symbol Timeline, just as you can to the main Timeline. When you create a symbol you choose the symbol type.

• Use graphic symbols  for static images and to create reusable pieces of animation that are tied to the main Timeline. Graphic symbols operate in sync with the main Timeline. Interactive controls and sounds won’t work in a graphic symbol’s animation sequence. Graphic symbols add less to the FLA file size than buttons or movie clips because they have no timeline.

• Use button symbols  to create interactive buttons that respond to mouse clicks, rollovers, or other actions. You define the graphics associated with various button states, and then assign actions to a button instance. For more information, see Handling events in the ActionScript 3.0 Developer’s Guide.

• Use movie clip symbols  to create reusable pieces of animation. Movie clips have their own multiframe Timeline that is independent from the main Timeline—think of them as nested inside a main Timeline that can contain interactive controls, sounds, and even other movie clip instances. You can also place movie clip instances inside the Timeline of a button symbol to create animated buttons. In addition, movie clips are scriptable with ActionScript®.

• Use font symbols to export a font and use it in other Animate documents.

  Animate provides built‑in components, movie clips with defined parameters, that you can use to add user interface elements, such as buttons, checkboxes, or scroll bars, to your documents. For more information, see About ActionScript 3.0 Components in Using ActionScript 3.0 Components.

   To preview animation in component instances and scaling of 9-slice-scaled movie clips in the Animate authoring environment, select Control > Enable Live Preview.

Create symbols

You can create a symbol from selected objects on the Stage, create an empty symbol and make or import the content in symbol-editing mode, and create font symbols in Animate. Symbols can contain all the functionality that Animate can create, including animation.

Using symbols that contain animation lets you create Animate applications with a lot of movement while minimizing file size. Consider creating animation in a symbol that has a repetitive or cyclic action—the up‑and‑down motion of a bird’s wings, for example.

To add symbols to your document, use shared library assets during authoring or at runtime.

Convert selected elements to a symbol

Create an empty symbol

(Animate only) Swapping multiple symbols

The Swap Symbol option allows you to swap symbols with a selected symbol or bitmaps.

Convert animation on the Stage into a movie clip symbol

To reuse an animated sequence on the Stage, or to manipulate it as an instance, select it and save it as a movie clip symbol.

Duplicate symbols

Duplicating a symbol lets you use an existing symbol as a starting point for creating a symbol.

To create versions of the symbol with different appearances, also use instances.

Duplicate a symbol using the Library panel

Duplicate a symbol by selecting an instance

Edit symbols

When you edit a symbol, Animate updates all the instances of that symbol in your document. Edit the symbol in the following ways:

• In context with the other objects on the Stage by using the Edit In Place command. Other objects are dimmed to distinguish them from the symbol you are editing. The name of the symbol you are editing appears in an Edit bar at the top of the Stage, to the right of the current scene name.

• In a separate window, using the Edit In New Window command. Editing a symbol in a separate window lets you see the symbol and the main Timeline at the same time. The name of the symbol you are editing appears in the Edit bar at the top of the Stage.

  You edit the symbol by changing the window from the Stage view to a view of only the symbol, using symbol-editing mode. The name of the symbol you are editing appears in the Edit bar at the top of the Stage, to the right of the current scene name.

  When you edit a symbol, Animate updates all instances of the symbol throughout the document to reflect your edits. While editing a symbol, use any of the drawing tools, import media, or create instances of other symbols.

• Change the registration point of a symbol (the point identified by the coordinates 0, 0) by using any symbol-editing method.

Edit a symbol in place

Edit a symbol in a new window

Edit a symbol in symbol-editing mode