Coloured background in illustrator that isn't included in export

Question

I have an illustrator document with many artboards. Almost all the artwork is white and needs to be exported as (transparent) pngs. In order to see the artwork I have to put a large grey rectangle behind everything, however if I forget hide this rectangle before I export I end up either accidentally exporting artwork with a grey background or having to cancel and return to my document, hide the rectangle and go through the export dialogue. I am constantly using/tweaking and exporting, so this is really starting to get annoying.

I have tried unchecking 'print' for the layer containing the grey rectangle but it still shows up when I export. I have also tried setting the paper colour of the document but this effects the colour of the artwork.

Is there something I'm missing?

Answer 1

Try This...

1. File > Document Set Up
2. Click each of the color boxes you see there in the Transparency section. There are 2.
3. The color picker will pop up when you click the color box
4. Set both boxes to the grey you want to use for the background.
5. Click OK
6. Now choose View > Show Transparency Grid from the menu.

This will show you a grey background on the artboard but the grey will not export.