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Flash mystery error 1046: InstanceInfo

I was working on a Flash component today and it started throwing this exact error at me after I cut-and-pasted some of the designer’s assets into the FLA:

1046:Type was not found or was not a compile-time constant: InstanceInfo

I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t have any symbols, actionscript, or instance names of “InstanceInfo.” I wasted nearly an hour tracking down this issue only to find out that it was another damn TLF Textfield BUG! Does anyone actually use the TLF Textfield? It’s nothing but trouble for me.

Enough ranting. The problem was that the designer had accidentally created a few TLF Textfields in a separate FLA, which I pasted into my FLA. Unfortunately, my document was set to publish to Flash 9, which doesn’t support TLF Textfields. The really annoying thing was that I didn’t get a warning from Flash when I pasted in the assets and the IDE gave me a cryptic and useless compiler error.

Luckily, the fix is simple. Open up the publish settings and click on the Flash tab. The IDE will then finally flag the TLF Textfields as a problem and show you a warning popup. If you want to change your publish settings to Flash 10, click “cancel” when the popup appears. If you want to keep your settings where they are, click “ok” and flash will convert your TLF Textfields to Classic Text. Save your FLA and you’re done!

I’ve been to busy to post much here lately, but I thought that this might actually save someone else a small headache.

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1 Comment

  1. Same here. The first time I wanted to use TFL text, I ended up loosing whole day figuring out why does one .swf load perfectly in my main swf, while another one sends an error.
    Those TFL texts are nothing but trouble, I agree.

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