# Using a string to change movie properties

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/using-a-string-to-change-movie-properties/250295>\
**Category:** flash\
**Created:** [January 28, 2008, 8:55am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/using-a-string-to-change-movie-properties/250295 "2008-01-28T08:55:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![c990](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de053/32.png) [@c990](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/c990)\
**Post date:** [January 28, 2008, 8:55am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/using-a-string-to-change-movie-properties/250295/1 "2008-01-28T08:55:35Z")

</div>

Sorry about the title. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for (that’s probably why I can’t find help)

I have say 50 movie clips on the stage. each has a name like “button1”, “button2” etc and I want to move each one using a for loop instead of hard coding “button1.\_x = 50”

When I try this it doesn’t work.

```auto
var buttonName = "button1";
buttonName._x = 50;

```

Can anyone steer me in the right direction with this?