Reading "inactive tables" with TABLE_ENTRIES_GET_VIA_RFC

I am putting together a little browsing program to examine data in SAP BW tables. In the SAP GUI I can use transaction S16 and S17 to examine the tables, but when I try to browse exactly the same tables using ABAP module "TABLE_ENTRIES_GET_VIA_RFC" to read the data into Excel it throws an "inactive table" exception.

Is there some parameter that would allow "TABLE_ENTRIES_GET_VIA_RFC" to read "inactive tabels" or is this just not possible?