An outside agency set up some templates in Illustrator that we need to have in InDesign. What is the easiest way to convert the files? Any info is greatly appreciated.

* You can place an Illustrator file, but other than scaling, rotating, and cropping the content is not editable in InDesign.
* You can place the Illustrator file, set it's transparency to 50%, lock it's layer, then redraw the content on lower layers. Delete the template layer when finished.
* You can copy and paste content between Illustrator and InDesign. Basic shapes and simple paths work fine, including some gradients. Text is much more trouble than it should be. (Why call it a Suite if the programs can't share simple content like text?)
I prefer option 2, using as little of option 3 as I can get away with. Obviously complex shapes are better copied than retraced.

There is a plug-in for InDesign <http://www.recosoft.com/products/pdf2id/index.htm> that imports PDFs. I have heard mixed opintions, but it's kind of like a pig with wings. Who cares how well it flies, it's that it flies that makes it interesting.

You can download a demo of PDF2ID at <http://recosoft.com> and try it for yourself. The demo is time limited and brain dead (substitutes x's for characters after the first page). Each column of type in the PDF comes in as a separate story in ID, so individual text boxes have to be manually rethreaded - which isn't too bad considering the alternatives. Text formatting, styles, and layout details are kept intact. Pretty remarkable, really. But at $250, I'd need to convert a lot of PDF files to make it worthwhile.