Product:
Cognos Planning 10.1.1
Windows 2008 R2 server

Symptom:
You want to move Cognos planning deployment files (macro) from one server in test to another server in prod environment. You have copied the macro folder to the new servers deployment folder. When you have many Cognos servers in the same environment it is recommended to have them all point to the same file share for deployment files.
When you run the Cognos planning deployment wizard get error when you select import.

Error message:
There was a problem running the Deployment Wizard.
null

There was a problem running the Planning Network Transfer Wizard. Please see the error log for more information.

Cause:
Strange characters like – and space are not allowed in server name or share name (folder name) for the deployment folder.

You can test if the servername is bad, by change in Cognos Configuration to use the IP address instead of the servername in the field for deployment.

E.g. \\192.168.1.10\deployment

If the IP address works, then you know it is the planning server name that make the deployment not to work.

Solution:
Go in to Cognos Configuration
Select Environment
Go to value for Deployment files location in Environment – Group Properties.
Change from \\server-name\deployment to
\\192.168.1.10\deployment

(default value is ../deployment)
(default value will look for the cognos planning files in folder c:\program files (x86)\ibm\cognos\c10\deployment.)

Click on Save
Click Stop on services
Click Start on services (check Details for error messages, should not be any).
Exit Cognos Configuration

or place the share on a windows server that have a short name with only letters in it.