🚀 go-pugleaf

in illustrator 9 or higher, under "object" is "flatten transparency". this feature will remove the actual transparency and simulate it exactly by using a divide pathfinder and matching the colors. it will look the same and have no transparency. in the flatten transparency dialog box, move the slider all the way to the right to keep your image in vector format. you can experiment with changing it to a raster as well. remember, though, that you cannot reverse this process once the file has been saved and closed, so save a backup before you start in case you are unhappy with the results.   am not positive, but i don't think you should have a problem with the spot colors, as long as the right libraries exist in both versions of illustrator. you can also indicate to your printer, for example, that the "yellow" spot color in your file should be printed using "pantone 100 cvc". the printer will get a seperation for all spot colors in your file as well as c,m,y, and k when he creates all the seperations. the colors on your screen (unless you are printing digitally, in which case you shouldn't be using spot colors - convert them to cmyk) are really for reference purposes in this case. the printer will print with cmyk and whatever spot colors you tell him to use.  chris