Cognos Drill Error

missing } after property list
Expected ‘}’
Expected ‘:’

We will be seeking a fix from IBM/Cognos for this drill error. We believe these are all the same error, and caused by a Cognos software bug. It can happen when you drill in a report that has quotation marks displayed somewhere on the page. Perhaps, for example, you have a journal line with a description containing the phrase 8.5″ by 11″ PAPER. Sometimes drilling on this line will get the error, or drilling on lines below it.

Workarounds

These are not pleasant, but they are all we have to offer for the time being:

If you keep clicking the OK button eventually the drill does run, but sometimes this requires dozens of clicks.
Instead, you could open another window and do your own run of what the drill would have run. In other words simply stop using window that got the error and start into Cognos fresh.