Export Illustrator to Photoshop while maintaining layers and groups

We received a website design from a client's graphic designer in an Illustrator format. We tried exporting the file to a Photoshop file and the .psd would never maintain layers. After struggling to slice out of the illustrator file, we finally stumbled across the solution in this comment: http://vectips.com/tips/export-illustrator-files-to-photoshop/comment-page-1/#comment-184625 To export from Illustrator to Photoshop:

1. Select all your artwork in illustrator
2. Go to: window / Attributes
3. uncheck the overprint fill option
4. Go to File -> Export and export as a .psd

Upon following these steps, all the layers were present in the exported .psd. Why did that have to be so hard!