diff --git a/lib/roo/excelx/sheet_doc.rb b/lib/roo/excelx/sheet_doc.rb
index 9788c1d2..cd17105e 100755
--- a/lib/roo/excelx/sheet_doc.rb
+++ b/lib/roo/excelx/sheet_doc.rb
@@ -101,6 +101,8 @@ def cell_from_xml(cell_xml, hyperlink)
             return create_cell_from_value(value_type, cell, formula, format, style, hyperlink, base_date, coordinate)
           end
         end
+
+        Excelx::Cell::Empty.new(coordinate)
       end
 
       def create_cell_from_value(value_type, cell, formula, format, style, hyperlink, base_date, coordinate)
diff --git a/test/test_roo.rb b/test/test_roo.rb
index 87dfe031..fac5add8 100644
--- a/test/test_roo.rb
+++ b/test/test_roo.rb
@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@
 # with the wrong spreadsheet class
 #STDERR.reopen "/dev/null","w"
 
+Encoding.default_external = "UTF-8"
+
 require 'test_helper'
 require 'stringio'