Exporting trouble

I am having trouble exporting my slideshow in Flash 8. I think it is because the pictures and complex action scripting make the file too large, but not sure. (It is 23.7 MG) I had to wait a while for it to export this morning, but now it will sit there forever. Problem being, I didn’t want to have to start over in a new file with each slide…but I am not sure what to do. I also want to add a vvideo to the presentation, which will only make the file larger. Any suggestions? I have tried messing with the publishing settings, but to no avail…I am not quite sure what i am doing there either. This is the first time I have tried the slideshow option, please help.