Flash, irritatingly enough, does not come with a specific stroke tool, but I have found a few ways to get around this and simulate a stroke effect with the following methods:

Glow Filter

If you are using Flash 8 or higher, you will have access to the filters panel, which can emulate a stroke effect whilst keeping the text in a textbox.

1. Select the text an find the “filter” window. (If you can’t find it, go window>properties>filter.)
2. Click the “Add Filter” button (Looks like a plus sign) and select the “Glow” filter.
3. Take the strength up to 1000%
4. Use the linked Blur X and Blur Y values to alter the stroke width.
5. For an Inner stroke, just select the “Inner glow” option.

This is the ideal way to add stroke, as you can dynamically alter the text.   However, if you are using an older version of Flash, you’ll have to…

Break Apart

This method involves breaking apart the text into vector elements, then applying the stroke.   It is not ideal, as it is awkward if you want to alter the text at a later date, but for those with an earlier version of flash than Flash 8, there’s no other method!

1. Select the text and select Modify>Break Apart (Or press ctrl+B by default) to break the text down into individual characters.
2. Select Modify>Break Apart again to break the characters down into vector elements.
3. Select the Ink Bottle Tool (Shortcut Key “s” for some reason o_O) and go through the text clicking on the inside and outside of each character (For example, you’d have to click the inside and outside of an “o” but only the outside of an “t”.
4. Once this is done to all of the text, hilight the text again and you can edit the stroke as if it were a stroke on a normal shape in flash.

Here’s hoping that they can include a stroke tool for text in the next version of Flash to make things a whole lot simpler!