I\'m using an (I know, I know, ...) in my app (single-page application with ExtJS 4.2) to do file downloads because they contain lots of data and
There is two solutions that i can think of. Either you have PHP post it's progress to a MySQL table where from frontend will be pulling information from using AJAX calls to check up on the progress of the generation. Using somekind of unique key that is being generated when accessing the page would be ideal for multiple people generating excel files at the same time.
Another solution would be to use nodejs & then in PHP post the progress of the excel file using cURL or a socket to a nodejs service. Then when receiving updates from PHP in nodejs you simply write the progress of the excel file for the right socket. This will cut off some browser support though. Unless you go through with it using external libraries to bring websocket support for pretty much all browsers & versions.
Hope this answer helped. I was having the same issue previous year. Ended up doing AJAX polling having PHP post progress on the fly.