Most probably you are just copying the old project and you are placing it in another location.
As the .local folder is hidden, most probably the files from it are not transferred to the new location and the local variables are not recreated when you are trying to run the project.
You have couple of solutions:
Copy and paste also the dll files and the .tmp folder from the origin .local\.globalvariables\GlobalVariables to the same location in the destination
Recreate the missing global variables in the project
In the origin location try to set the .local folder as not Hidden and then try to copy and paste the project into a new location