diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 3c73d89a..aecceff4 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -14,6 +14,8 @@
   
 ## Other changes
 
+* xlsx files that do not have a "Styles" part can now be read (#505, #506 @jt6)
+
 * Path handling:
 
   - All paths are passed through `normalizePath()` (#498, #499, new behaviour for xlsx but not xls) and `enc2native()` (#370).
diff --git a/src/XlsxWorkBook.h b/src/XlsxWorkBook.h
index df357b85..ac06edcd 100644
--- a/src/XlsxWorkBook.h
+++ b/src/XlsxWorkBook.h
@@ -267,6 +267,10 @@ class XlsxWorkBook {
   }
 
   void cacheDateFormats() {
+    if (!zip_has_file(path_, rel_.part("styles"))) {
+      return;
+    }
+
     std::string stylesXml = zip_buffer(path_, rel_.part("styles"));
     rapidxml::xml_document<> styles;
     styles.parse<rapidxml::parse_strip_xml_namespaces>(&stylesXml[0]);
diff --git a/tests/testthat/sheets/no-styles-or-sharedStrings-parts.xlsx b/tests/testthat/sheets/no-styles-or-sharedStrings-parts.xlsx
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..54392384
Binary files /dev/null and b/tests/testthat/sheets/no-styles-or-sharedStrings-parts.xlsx differ
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-read-excel.R b/tests/testthat/test-read-excel.R
index fefbd8be..820a82d0 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-read-excel.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-read-excel.R
@@ -115,3 +115,11 @@ test_that("non-ASCII filenames can be read", {
   expect_error_free(read_xls(tricky_xls_file))
   expect_error_free(read_xlsx(tricky_xlsx_file))
 })
+
+test_that("styles and sharedStrings parts can be absent", {
+  expect_error_free(
+    df <- read_xlsx(test_sheet("no-styles-or-sharedStrings-parts.xlsx"))
+  )
+  expect_identical(df$Language[1], "german")
+  expect_true(all(df$Age > 0))
+ })