Drop Down Menu buttons won't work

Ok I think this should be easy, but I must have missed something…I have made a drop down menu, that through shape tweening expands when you mouse over a tab…and when its fully expanded…buttons show up…I want the buttons to perform actions when clicked, but as it is now, I cannot get them to simply trace…

I have a movieclip named tools on the main stage…this tools movieclip is the one that expands when you hover over its tab…in the tools movieclip I have a button that shows up when the tab is expanded…“jButton”

in the main movie…I am trying to access it using the following code…

tools.jButton.onRelease = function()

that does nothing…

in the tools movieclip I tried to put actionscript

jButton.onRelease = function()

this does nothing as well…please help…I am trying to make a simple tools menu which will allow the user to print or save the contents of a movieclip…as as soon as the buttons perform any action I can go on to coding the ideas above…