Just like anything else, it was hours to research and try different solutions, but in the end it was just a few lines of code.
I tried initially to do this from a macro in Excel, but I could never get it to save the data. (yes, I coded 'refresh' and 'save'... it just didn't work)
This code works. Save it as a 'vbs' (vbscript) file and run it.
Also, be sure to uncheck 'enable background refresh' on ALL the connections
Set xl = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
xl.Visible = True
Set wb = xl.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\Book1.xlsx")
wb.RefreshAll
wb.Save
wb.Close
xl.Quit