I've justed added last months log files to sawmill and now when I pull reports for the first time I get this message "Error in generating the report or in displaying progress for ....(whatever I'm trying to pull i.e. session_overview, pages, individual_sessions, etc)". If I clik on the link for that report again it comes up with no problem. I'm running version 7 and this is the first time I've experienced the problem.
If you are not using 7.1.11, I suggest upgrading to that version.
One thing you can try is to clear out (remove the files within) the report cache. The report cache is located in the Sawmill install directory located in LogAnalysisInfo/ReportCache.