...Game shows an unreasonable x y rectangle sticky cursor that does nothing. Right click is necessary to get out of this.
This only seems to apply to a freshly loaded savegame. In other cases it seems to just use the settings used last.
The "Expand allowed area" works fine for me. Could you please provide a screenshot? Are you using any mods?
Okay, I think we can close it for now. We'll see if anyone else reports similar issues.