This works as expected with com.crealytics:spark-excel_2.11:0.12.5 libray.

val df_excel= spark.read. format("com.crealytics.spark.excel"). option("useHeader", "true"). option("treatEmptyValuesAsNulls", "false"). option("inferSchema", "false"). option("addColorColumns", "false").load(file_path) display(df_excel)