Unable to export gridview to excel when the gridview is not visible

Hello, I would like to allow users the ability to just immediately download the excel files containing different data from 5 different modules. When I set the gridview as viewable, it can be open in excel normally, but I would prefer the gridview to be invisible. So I set the visible mode to false. But this result in the excel file, when open does not contain the data required. Any suggestions would be entirely appreciated.
<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" HeaderStyle-BackColor="#3AC0F2" HeaderStyle-ForeColor="White" RowStyle-BackColor="#A1DCF2" AlternatingRowStyle-BackColor="White" AlternatingRowStyle-ForeColor="#000" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="false" Visible="false"> <Columns> <asp:BoundField DataField="Test1" HeaderText="Contact Name" ItemStyle-Width="150px" /> <asp:Boun ...