What are my options for importing recurring contributions?
Here is some relevant information I got from JonGold on this matter in a private chat in IRC. Posting the conversation in its entirety.


[21:16] &lt;borislav&gt; hi
[21:16] &lt;JonGold&gt; hi
[21:17] &lt;borislav&gt; is this by any chance your answer here? http://stackoverflow.com/a/31733507/2762014
[21:18] &lt;JonGold&gt; yup
[21:18] &lt;borislav&gt; cool
[21:18] &lt;borislav&gt; how did you import the recurring contributions into your civi database?
[21:19] &lt;JonGold&gt; I used the command line CSV API import tool
[21:19] &lt;borislav&gt; ah!
[21:20] &lt;borislav&gt; could have thought of that myself, haha
[21:20] &lt;borislav&gt; so you first imported the contacts and then the recurring contributions?
[21:20] &lt;JonGold&gt; I'm looking at the CSV now.  Here are my headers:  "trxn_id","installments","frequency_unit","amount","invoice_id","start_date"    ,"create_date",contact_id,"frequency_interval"
[21:21] &lt;JonGold&gt; Yes - I do a lot of migrations to Civi.  I first import the first name/last name/external identifier.  That way I can map external IDs to CiviCRM contact IDs.
[21:21] &lt;JonGold&gt; Though I realize that we've confused two different issues here.
[21:22] &lt;JonGold&gt; The IPN issue didn't involve me importing anything.  I had a Civi client who switched from Drupal to Wordpress.  So the database didn't change, nothing was imported.  I just needed IPNs to show up at a Wordpress-based URL.
[21:22] &lt;JonGold&gt; But I've also imported plenty of recurring donations using the command line API CSV tool!
[21:24] &lt;borislav&gt; right, in that case you already had the recurring contribs in the civi database so you just needed to redirect the IPN. in my case I need to import them to the database
[21:24] &lt;JonGold&gt; What payment processor are you using?
[21:24] &lt;borislav&gt; Paypal Standard
[21:25] &lt;JonGold&gt; Hmm.  I'm not sure how successful you're going to be, but I can give you some tips.
[21:25] &lt;borislav&gt; if you want to, answer my question here: http://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/7146/what-are-my-options-for-importing-recurring-contributions
[21:26] &lt;borislav&gt; or I can compile an answer with your tips and post it
[21:26] &lt;borislav&gt; whichever you prefer :)
[21:26] &lt;JonGold&gt; When you create a recurring donation in CiviCRM using PayPal Standard, Civi gives PayPal a string of data that it expects to get back.  It includes the contact ID, recurring contribution ID, etc.
[21:27] &lt;JonGold&gt; So when PayPal sends its IPN ping, Civi is expecting to get that data back in a particular format.
[21:27] &lt;JonGold&gt; If it's getting the IPN data pinged to it and that contribution was created in a different CRM, the data won't be there.
[21:28] &lt;JonGold&gt; In theory, you can go into each IPN subscription in PayPal and change the data.  I've done it manually.  You can also possibly write a script.  It's a huge pain.
[21:28] &lt;JonGold&gt; You can compile these answers - I don't think I need the Stack Exchange points :)
[21:29] &lt;JonGold&gt; My last client in your situation agreed that the option they'd take is to manually upload a list of recurring donations from a CSV (I forget whether it was compiled manually or exported from a legacy system)
[21:29] &lt;JonGold&gt; The recurring contribution records were still present in Civi so they could, e.g., search for recurring donors, but there were no IPNs, just the manually imported recurring donations.
[21:30] &lt;JonGold&gt; As each person's credit card expired, they would have that person restart the recurring payment through Civi.  This may work differently with PayPal standard though.
[21:31] &lt;JonGold&gt; Also, to respond to your not seeing the "Submit Credit Card Contribution" button - I'm not sure that works with Paypal Standard, I'm afraid.  Not 100% sure though
[21:39] &lt;borislav&gt; I had no idea that the paypal IPN data depends on what Civi sent to Paypal in the first place. this makes things much more complicated. for me it may not be worth it to do all of this. with not too many subscribers, it might make more sense to ask them to register for a donation again, this time with Civi's donation form
[21:40] &lt;borislav&gt; you have saved me a lot of time with this info, thank you
[21:40] &lt;JonGold&gt; no problem!