In a recent disaster I lost about 40 pictures from my computer. I have them in .fla files on my domain so I downloaded them all and opened them with flash, but cannot export them. Is there a preference or setting to enable this, or do I need to use some other program for this?
Well one way would be to click the image in the library, then right-click and select “Edit…”.
This’ll open your image in an image-editor (you can define which in the preferences) and allow you to save it outside of Flash – and of course edit it.
that does not work, I tried it originally. since the images are no longer in their correct directory on the computer from when i added them to the .fla it gives an error message. 
Well perhaps a few copy/paste’s?
Place the images on the stage, and then copy / paste 'em into any graphics program and then save 'em.