Unpivoting a wide month-year grid into month, year, and amount columns

PL-300 By islever Editorial Last updated Sep 25, 2026

Transform and load the data

Short answer

B Unpivot melts the year columns into rows, yielding month, year, and order amount columns.

Question

You have the CSV file shown in the following table. You use Power Query Editor to preview the data in the file. You need to transform the data to meet the following requirements: • The first column must contain the month. • The second column must contain the year. • The third column must contain the order amount for the month and year. Which transformation should you use first? - Exhibit: Unpivoting a wide month-year grid into month, year, and amount columns

Exhibit: Unpivoting a wide month-year grid into month, year, and amount columns

remove
unpivot Correct Answer
transpose
pivot

Key Takeaways

Unpivot converts column headers into row values — turning the year columns into a Year column and leaving Month plus the unpivoted amount, which is exactly the target three-column shape.

A CSV previewed in Power Query holds order amounts in a wide month-by-year grid, and the target shape is three columns: month, year, and the order amount for that month and year.

Common mistake: Reaching for transpose because the table looks rotated — transposing merely flips the grid and produces another wide table with month names as columns, not the long three-column layout.

Expert Analysis

Why the Answer Is Correct

The source is a wide grid where each year is a column header and each month a row. Unpivoting (B) melts those year columns into rows, producing an Attribute column (year) and a Value column (order amount) beside the existing Month column — precisely the required month, year, amount triple. Microsoft's unpivot documentation describes this header-to-rows transformation as the standard way to normalize cross-tab data.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

Remove (A) deletes columns or rows, discarding the year and amount information the target shape needs. Transpose (C) flips the table so months become column headers — still wide, just rotated, and further from the goal. Pivot (D) goes the wrong direction entirely: it rolls rows up into columns, which is the operation you would use to undo the transformation being sought.

Community Comment Notes

The most-endorsed comment answers unpivot outright. Another walks the alternatives: removing anything loses information, and transposing yields a table with month names as columns — neither approaches the required long format.

Official Reference

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/unpivot-column

This link opens the official vendor documentation in a new tab.

Community Votes

100%

100% of anonymous learners picked answer B. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.

Discussion 7 contributions

Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors.

From public community threads 7

jaume 👍 1 Answered B

Whatever we could remove (option A) would result in a loss of information Transposing the table (Option C) would result in a 4x3 table with columns "Month", "January", "February" and "March" We shoud unpivot 2nd and 3rd columns
INDEAVR 👍 11 Answered B

B. unpivot
rcaliandro 👍 1 Answered B

B. unpivot. Correct choice
IVO999 👍 1 Answered B

B is correct
539d541 👍 1 Answered B

B - unpivot

Show 2 more comments

noone420 👍 1 Answered B

B unpivot
ChopChop007 👍 1

Correct!

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