Newbie - Passing variables between loaded .swf's

programming flash
1

I am building a flash website where each page is a .swf loaded into a base .swf.

I need to pass some data from one .swf into the next one. To do this I thought I’d create a variable on the main timeline then when a button is clicked I write the new value to the variable and then retrieve it from the next .swf when it loads

This is the code I am using to set the variable but it is not working:

 on (release) {
set (_root.test,"hello");
gotoAndPlay(11);
}