Target path issues, multiple nested mc's

Question

I have a movie clip with a total of 15 nested movie clips
within it. My goal is to be able to scroll through these 15 mc's,
they're thumbnails. Before I nested all the individual movie clips
into one, they expanded when rolled over. Now that they are nested,
they don't expand when rolled over. I'm new to flash and am using
this project to learn as I go. I understand the concept of target
paths, but can't quite seem to apply them. I'm assuming that's my
conflict.
The main movie clip is called container_mc, with an instance
name of container. Each nested movie clip's instance name is
button1 - button15, movie clips named buttonclip1 - buttonclip15.
The expand actions are in my main timeline, with individual actions
applied to each button.
Here is the code in the main timeline:
_root.numButtons=15;
function Expand(buttonRate, buttonName, buttonSize) {
if (buttonName.scale==1) {
setProperty(buttonName, _xscale,
buttonName._xscale+=((buttonSize*buttonRate)-(buttonName._xscale*buttonRate))*(buttonRate /10));
setProperty(buttonName, _yscale,
buttonName._yscale+=((buttonSize*buttonRate)-(buttonName._yscale*buttonRate))*(buttonRate /10));
if (buttonName.scale==0) {
setProperty(buttonName, _xscale,
buttonName._xscale+=((buttonRate*100)-(buttonName._xscale*buttonRate))*(buttonRate/10));
setProperty(buttonName, _yscale,
buttonName._yscale+=((buttonRate*100)-(buttonName._yscale*buttonRate))*(buttonRate/10));
And the code for each button:
onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
_root.Expand(2,_root.button1,115);
and
on (rollOver, dragOver) {
this.scale = 1;
for (i=1; i<=_root.numButtons; i++) {
_root["button"+i].swapDepths(1);
this.swapDepths(2);
on (rollOut, dragOut) {
this.scale = 0;
Any help would be greatly appreciated, I've tried everything
I could think of with no results.

Answer 1

because button1 etc are no longer on the _root timeline,
using _root.button1 etc and, more generally, _root["button"+i] will
no longer target your buttons. attached to your movieclip butons
try: