Professional :: Can't Manipulate Symbols With Flash CS5 3-D Rotation Tools

I am just learning to use Flash CS5 Professional (aided by the "Flash Basics" tutorials of Lynda.com). I am presently trying to manipulate symbols as motion-tweens with the 3-D rotation tool found in the Flash toolbar. At the moment I'm trying to take a single word originally created as text, now a symbol, and animate it with motion-tweens so that it appears to be twirling on its x axis or y axis as though it's tumbling through the air like a coin.My trouble is that I can successfully get the symbol to motion-tween itself through one half of a single rotation. But nothing I try seems to work to have the symbol complete its rotation all the way around without the symbol wanting to suddenly flip and rotate in the other direction to complete the full 360 degree rotation. Every trick I use, the symbol wants to tween back the way it came to finish its rotation. This is happening whether I try to rotate type as a symbol, or whether I use other objects (rectangles, ovals, etc.) I've created and then converted to symbols and then movie clips (which I have done in all cases). No matter what I try, this program is not cooperating. What am I doing wrong. My Flash CS5 often behaves as if it's buggy (I'm running it on a brand new state of the art iMac, with the latest version of Snow Leopard as my OS). But even with all it's other little bugs, restarting Flash doesn't seem to clear up this mystery.