I have a script that opens a set of Excel workbooks in a single Excel instance and updates connections and pivot caches. The end user reports that they usually open all the workbooks are refresh connections in parallel instead of in series. It looks like parallel processing is possible with PowerShell but so far I’m unable to get Excel Workbooks to open using the script block and Start-Job method. All that happens is that the Excel instance is launched and the job runs forever without completing.