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As part of a larger project, I noticed an annoying thing, that kept consequently crashing Flash CS4 (on a Mac OS X Intel 10.6.1): Whenever I tried to copy or cut this one symbol from the stage (to place it in another layer), Flash crashed completely.

There were many conditions, that could have been the cause of this, but I managed to boil it down to something reportable.

Complete the following simple 9 steps (the fifth one is the strangest IMHO):

1. Open Flash CS4.
2. Create new AS3 FLA document.
3. Import an image to stage (Cmd+R).
4. Break the image (Cmd+B) creating a shape with the bitmap as fill “color”.
5. Remove a slice from the top of the image by selecting a part of the shape and deleting it. By slice I mean a rectangle from the top in the full width of the shape reducing the overall height of the shape.
6. Convert the shape to a symbol.
7. Rotate the symbol 90 degrees via the transform panel.
8. Cut or copy the symbol.
9. Watch Flash CS4 crash and burn.

The strangest parts are, that I had to remove a slice in the full width of the image to make this crash. If I didn’t remove anything or just removed a rectangle from the corner of from the middle, it did not work (or actually, it did work – but it did not crash), it had to be a slice in the entire width of the shape.

Furthermore, the rotation had to be exactly 90 degrees. Not -90, 180, 89 or anything else, but 90 degrees.

The shape had to be converted to a symbol – and inside the symbol the shape had to be at 0 degrees rotation. If the symbol was at 50 and the shape inside at 40, it would seem the same, but the crash did not happen.

I did not try all different permutations, so if you find, that this can happen under even simpler circumstances, similar circumstances or maybe not all on other operating systems, please share in the comments below. I have found this to cause the crash on both my own Mac OS X Intel 10.6.1 and a coworker’s Mac OS X Intel 10.5.

I have reported this to Adobe as well, but it seems that the Flash CS4 bug database is not public – only the Flash Player bug database.

Related posts:

1. Flash development and the practice of Scripted Layout
2. Using AddThis with Flash
3. Minor change in handling NaN positions in Flash Player 10,0,22