Illustrator exports whole artboard instead of the object - pls help

[zsofiaf41490065]

Hi guys!
Every now and then it happens with me and makes my work a lot harder- most of the time when I try to export a drawing from illustrator (to png), it exports only the drawing without anything else. Sometimes I don't know what happens and whatever I do, it wants to export the whole artboard, even though every other layer is turned off. What am I doing wrong? (use artboards is not turned on). I tried to fit the artboard to the artwork (and turn it on and off again) but it didn't help.

Please help me. Thanks a lot!

[Monika Gause]

Please embed screenshots in your post, so we don't have to download them, thank you.

Are the layers set to print?