Dear Kaniz, thanks. Your suggestion to copy the Excel file from DBFS to a temp folder "e.g. /tmp/" worked. Once I run read_xlsx() the upload is instantenous.

Indeed, we had the same problem the other way around. I was not able to save an xlsx or pdf file into a folder on "/dbfs/FileStore/*". However, I can save it to "/tmp/*" and then copy it to where I want the file to be. Good to know!

Thanks again!