# Accessing Vars and Instances within External SWF

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/accessing-vars-and-instances-within-external-swf/250102>\
**Category:** flash\
**Created:** [January 25, 2008, 5:12pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/accessing-vars-and-instances-within-external-swf/250102 "2008-01-25T17:12:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kvfb97](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a587f6/32.png) [@kvfb97](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/kvfb97)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2008, 5:12pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/accessing-vars-and-instances-within-external-swf/250102/1 "2008-01-25T17:12:56Z")

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Love the tutorials so thanks very much.

My problem is accessing the variables and instances within an externally loaded swf file. For example, I have a main site and I load the menu into the stage using the loader class and addchild function. How do I access the variables and instances within the menu swf? With AS2 it was:

```auto
container_menu.menu_variable;

```

But that doesn’t work with AS3. The menu file is loading fine for me and if I trace the variable within the menu file and load it into the main file and test the movie, it traces the variable fine.

Many thanks. 🙂