Use File>Place command, and check Import Options in same window where you select PDF to import....

Then you have extra window before you place PDF, there you can choose which pages you want to place...

Never mind the poor quality, if you print your layout or export it, quality is OK. InDesign shows you low res display version of placed images and PDFs etc by default.

You can also change the quality of display image by right-clicking the image/PDF and choosing Display Performance > High Quality. Then you will see the content of PDF as you would see it in Adobe Reader....

arjun2 wrote:

 

okay..how can i ungroup this pdf?

Do you mean place a page of a PDF and then edit individual elements as you could in the program that made the PDF? If that's what you want, that's not the way it works. The page of the PDF is all one image, but there are a few things you can do that will be sort-of like ungrouping the PDF.

One would be to save the PDF with layers. This can be done (for example) if you created the page (from which the PDF was exported) in InDesign  and checked the Create Acrobat Layers checkbox when exporting to PDF. When placed in InDesign, you can switch the layers on or off either when placing, or from Object>Object Layer Options after the PDF has been placed.

Another thing you can do is to place several copies of the same PDF and crop out portions on the different copies. This doesn't work if objects overlap, though, unless overlapping objects are on different layers that you switch off. Text won't be editable, but objects can be resized or moved, if that helps.

There is also PDF2ID, which can convert a PDF to an editable InDesign document. I haven't used this, so I can't say how successful it is, but I expect that you will need to tweak the newly-created ID file to make it look like the PDF to one degree or another.

Did you purchase ID as a stand-alone or as part of a Creative Suite? Most (if not all) of the Suites come with Acrobat Pro. You could try editing it with that (if it is editable).