I have an excel sheet which has dozens of cells
being updated by a program called RSLinx.
This program poles a controller on a network
for values stored in its memory, these values
are then displayed visually in the Excel sheet.

My problem is this:

If I attempt to run a Visual Basic Routine
or a macro from Excel the sheet will not update
as long as the routine/macro runs.
I am updating the cells using syntax like this:
Worksheet("Sheet1").[A1] = [RSLINX|SVRNAME! 'I:000/00,L1']
The cause appears to be that focus is placed entirely on
Excel while the routine runs so RSLinx does not get poled
until Excel returns to the background at the end of the
routine's execution.

The question I need answered is:

Can Excel be made to run it's routines in the background so
that RSLinx can get CPU time to update it's data?

If so how?

Gary