Working with Objects > Selecting objects

Selecting objects

To modify an object, you must first select it. Flash provides a variety of methods for making selections, including the Arrow tool, the Lasso tool, and keyboard commands. You can group individual objects to manipulate them as a single object. See Grouping objects.

Flash highlights objects that have been selected. Strokes are highlighted with a colored line. Fills are highlighted with a dot pattern. Selected groups are highlighted with bounding boxes.

The stroke and fill are highlighted with the color used for the outline of the layer that contains the selected object. You can change the layer outline color in the Layer Properties dialog box. See Viewing layers.

You can choose to select only strokes or only fills of an object. You can hide selection highlighting in order to edit objects without viewing highlighting.

You might want to prevent a group or symbol from being selected and accidentally changed. To do this, you can lock the group or symbol.

Selected bitmaps and symbols are highlighted with a dot pattern. See Using imported artwork overview.