White boxes showing under transparent overlay - how to fix?

[jessica.parham]

Hi!

I'm creating this graph and used a white box to hide the gridlines behind the numbers. However, when I add a transparent overlay, it shows the white box underneath. Can anyone tell me why it's doing this and how to fix it? 

Here's what I've already tried:

- changing to rgb color mode. This won't work because these images are being imported to indesign to print.

- creating a clipping mask. This could be a user error, but no matter how I clip it, either it clips the lines inside the white box, or makes everything, lines, box and all, disappear.

[Monika Gause]

Please shopw us steps of what you did.

Select objects and show the appearance panel with them.

Please do also show the layers panel.

I can't see anything wrong with your design.

[jessica.parham]

Hi Monica! Thank you for your reply! Here are a few more screen shots. Hopefully this helps. The issue is that where the white box is placed behind the transparent overlay, it is showing as a darker grey. I took another screen shot in rgb mode so you can see what I want it to look like. I hope this makes sense. Thank you for looking!

[Monika Gause]

I don't understand what you want this to look like or how this is built. Please upload the file and please tell us what's wrong about it currently. Line black line running through the numbers?

[jessica.parham]

There is a white box between the numbers and the gridlines in the file to hide the gridlines behind the numbers so they're easily readable. However, in the part of the graph that is covered by the transparent grey overlay, that white box is visible underneath and it displays as a dark grey color. Note how the space behind the numbers under the overlay appears to have a darker grey background. That is how the white box is displaying with the overlay on it. I have uploaded the file here (I couldn't upload a .ai, but this pdf is editable in ai). Thank you!

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

i see it now. Thank you.

So what's happening: transparency options are rendered differently when there is white underneath than when there is nothing underneath.

You could check this out in Overprint preview.

Or you could just draw another white box below everything.

[jessica.parham]

The white box behind fixed it. Thank you so much!

[Monika Gause]

Glad you could solve it.