Button rollover to target movie clip within another movie clip

I'm creating a map where users can rollover icons in the legend to highlight areas of the map; conversely, they can rollover areas of the map to highlight the associated icons in the legend. For some reason I'm not able to target the animations in the second level "map" movie clip.

The legend is at the _root level. It contains:
- buttons to trigger the rollover actions
- associated highlight animations (separate from the buttons)

The map (instance:"map") contains:
- the map (which can be panned and zoomed)
- buttons over certain areas of the map to trigger the rollover actions
- associated highlight animations (separate from the buttons)
- A giant button area that allows the map to be panned / dragged around.
Because the map can be panned and zoomed, the associated rollover buttons and animated clips need to be contained within the "map" clip.

All actions are at the root level.

The legend buttons (at _root) trigger the animated highlights on the legend icons (at _root), but NOT the map highlights (at _root.map).

The map buttons (at _root.map) also trigger the animated highlights on the legend icons (at _root), but not the map highlights (at _root.map).

It doesn't seem to matter whether is use a relative path or add "_root" to make it absolute - I can't trigger the animations at _root.map. It also doesn't seem to matter whether I target frame numbers or frame labels.

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To simplify:
ROOT = icon buttons; icon animations  <--ANIMATIONS WORK FINE
"MAP" CLIP = map buttons, map animations  <--CAN NOT TARGET FROM EITHER SET OF BUTTONS
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Forgive me for not posting the FLA, but it's massive.

The actions for the legend buttons are essentially:
icon1_button.onRollOver = function() {
      icon1_animation.gotoAndPlay("fadein");
      map.area1_animation.gotoAndPlay("fadein");
};

The actions for the map buttons are essentially:
map.area1_button.onRollOver = function() {
      loadMovie("infobubble.swf", holder_mc);  // I assume irrelevant to this problem
      new Tween(holder_mc, "_alpha", Regular.easeIn, 0, 100, 4, false);  // I assume irrelevant to this problem
      icon1_animation.gotoAndPlay("fadein");
      map.area1_animation.gotoAndPlay("fadein");
};

I've read that some people have had trouble targeting animation clips contained in clips that also contain buttons, but I haven't found a solution - and I've never had this problem before. Maybe I'm missing something obvious? Any help would be much appreciated!Start Free Trial