Sub movie code won't work

I created a 10 frame movie in a seperate FLA, then copied the frames into a new movie clip symbol in my main FLA. if I drag it onto the stage the embedded code works, but if I set it up to Export for ActionScript and insert it on the stage then the code for the upper layer of the clip doesn’t work. There are two subclips of text that should be hidden:

queTxt.alpha=0;
expTxt.alpha=0;

…yet I can see these. The buttons in the third subclip do work though, so everything from a layer down from the root of the movie works, but not the stuff on top. I’ve tried adding ‘this.’ and ‘root.’ to the front of the above but it makes no difference.

Please explain where I’m going wrong!