I have to agree with the OP here, there seems nothing sinister or untoward in what they are trying to do. By letting the computer get on with stuff, they can do something more productive.

Mavyak gave you one option, but if that doesn't work, maybe you can intersperse your code with an time procedure (see OnTime) that writes to a cell on the activesheet. Couple this will DoEvents, and that may be enough to register activity.