Flash is terrible for animation. Here is Toon Boom Studio, exactly the best tool for 2d animation.
off-topic: yeah I heard that was a much more user friendly and powerful approach overall, shame they don't use it at my college

changed their site since last time I visited looks much more professional now, looked kinda tacky last i was there.
@the OP flash has some terrible terrible work flow hindering issues i wouldn't recommend it for anything but redrawn frame by frame vector animation and that's most likely not at all what you want to do