Pathfinder Merging Issue

[Dannyl23]

Hello, I am new to Adobe Illustrator and am having problems merging an image I am working on. I select my work, expand appearance and then attempt to merge the selected area, but every time I click merge, most of my work disappears. I am not sure why. I have used merge before and this has never happened. Here is a picture to show what is happening.merging is deleting most of my line work

[Mylenium]

Without seeing the original outlines nobody can tell you the exact cause, but it seems to me you have a general misunderstanding here. It may not at all be necessary nor mathematically logical to merge your areas. Judging from the scattered remnants it is more likely that your appearance can only be retained with compound paths. Other than that of course any number of issues can make merging paths and areas go kaboom, from invalid open paths to self-intersections to overlapping vertices to leftovers from previous operations that would need cleaning up....

Mylenium

[Dannyl23]

Here is the original picture, before I merge it. What I am trying to do is isolate each area, so that I can color each individual closed-off section. Let me know if this helps. Thanks for the response by the way!

[Dannyl23]

[Ton Frederiks]

What I am trying to do is isolate each area, so that I can color each individual closed-off section.

You should try Live Paint.

[Dannyl23]

Thank you! I will check it out!

[kennamangan]

Your lines are disappearing because they are strokes. You have to go to object, expand, and check the box for stroke. Then you can merge properly.

[hamood25206530oq8u]

I had the same problem and this fixed it thank you so much dud