Shaping line segment end points [duplicate]

Question

I created a logo for a company I'm a part of, but I've ran into an issue after trying to put it over different backgrounds. Basically, because I didn't know how to shape the black line segments in the logo, I overlayed them with white segments that would seem to erase what I wanted, and then put a framed white box behind the logo, so the white lines would disappear.

But now my team wants to get rid of the white box and for the logo to be transparent so it can be put over various backgrounds. This is a problem because the white lines still exist that were used to edit the black ones. My question is, how I can cut/chop/divide/erase the black segments so I can shape them how I need. From what I've tried, the eraser functions do not work.

Answer 1

Select all the lines, go to Object>Expand or Object>Path>Outline Stroke.

Select all boxes because you need those lines to be objects.

Then you can select the whole logo and go to Pathfinder (you can find it in Window>Pathfinder) and select Divide.

From here on you can select and delete all the lines that you don't need.

Tip: I would save the previous version of the logo and if you have lines that are part of the logo and you want to keep will add them back to the logo.