InDesign alignment uses stroke edge instead of object center — how to fix?

[Pehlivan]

Hi everyone,
I’m working in InDesign (latest version, 2025) and I’ve noticed something strange about alignment and guides.

When I draw a rectangle with a thick stroke and try to align it to a guide or the page center, InDesign aligns it based on the outer edge of the stroke, not the object’s true center.

In Illustrator, alignment ignores stroke thickness (which is what I want). But in InDesign, it always includes the stroke, which shifts the object slightly.

I remember there used to be an option called “Use Preview Bounds” that controlled this behavior, but I can’t find it anywhere in the current version — not in Preferences, not in the Align panel.

My question:
👉 Is there still a way in InDesign 2025 to align objects based on their geometric center (ignoring stroke thickness)?
If this feature was removed, is there any new equivalent setting or workaround?

Thanks in advance for any help or insight!

[Mike Witherell]

Ekran,

I often set the Stroke alignment to Inside. See this screenshot of the Stroke panel.

This way, your bounding box and overall size are going to agree.

[BobLevine]

How exactly are you aligning things? Smart guides should allow you to align anything by just dragging it around the page. And FWIW, I don't recall anything called Use Preview Bounds. Are you sure you're thinking about InDesign?

Edit: I just googled that term and it is an Illustrator feature.