Make part of fill transparent

[ericm10089679]

Working with an eps file that was sent to me, I am attempting to make the pink inside of the area transparent while leaving the outer part (lower part of the image) - which appears to be a stroke, but it's not. I have attempted to add a stroke and remove the fill, it does not line up correctly; I've done this with both the white and pink areas.  Using a paint.net and the magic wand I can achieve this as in the image below but I cannot remember how to in Illustrator (maybe it's too early in the day). 

[Monika Gause]

Reduce the opacity of the fill to 0% in the transparency panel.

Group all the objects.

Turn on knockout group.

Go to CPU preview if you cannot see the effect.

Do not save it as an EPS.

If this is for the final file of a  logo, you will need a different approach.

[ericm10089679]

The pink area is only one one object. The knockout group, if I click on Make Mask removes the pink completely, even in GPU view.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Showing these clippings does not really help. Please show the Layers panel and the objects in it. 

Maybe you need to outline strokes and then use Pathfinder functions to get what you want. Window > Pathfinder.

[ericm10089679]

@Monika Gause thank you for the pathfinder tool suggestion. Between the Divide tool, the right grouping of layers, and nights sleep I was able to achieve what we were hoping to. 
I don't post here, so I wasn't sure how much of the screen I should share, I'll do more next time. 

[Monika Gause]

Glad you could solve it.

What's usually important is the Layers panel with relevant layers (and groups) unfolded. There we can see additional elements and also whether there are appearances. The complete artwork is often really important, in order to judge whether a certain workflow makes sense and also to know if we are looking at an inside or outside of an object. And then the Appearance panel with the relevant object selected. So there might be several appearance panel shots required.