Text to variable

Hi,

This may be a really obvious question but does anyone know how to convert input text to a variable?

At the moment I have a textArea component and want to make the user’s input text a variable so I can use it later.

I can get a trace on the input text with “trace(mytext.text)” but I just don’t know how to make it a variable.

Any help would be greatly apprecaited.

Thanks

…Actionscript 2 by the way