Sorry this might be very basic and beginner level but I need to fill an enclosed path with a color. 

I have:

• used bezier pen to create four enclosed points making a square
• Clicked on the color from the bottom of the page
• Color goes to the lines of the bezier pen and doesn't fill the square
• Shift + Selecting a color gives the bezier pen lines of square a stroke.

I just want to fill in an enclosed four point square with a color of my choosing.  Is that possible on inkscape?

That sounds odd to me - do you have any transparency enabled:

Do you anything other than "none" applied in the "Shape" dropdown? I can reproduce the issue when "Triagle in" is selected.

SVG does not support variable width strokes, so Inkscape fakes it when you select a shape by rendering a closed path that is the shape of the stroke you've drawn. Imagine a square with a hole in the middle - except that the hole is almost as large as the square itself, so the shape just looks like a square stroke. Thinking about it as a shape with a hole in, it becomes clearer why it behaves the way it does when you set the fill or stroke colour.

@Xav @PixelPest Yes, I had the triangle in selected.  It wasn't filling in the square because I had triangle in selected.  I was about to give up lol.  Thanks so much!

were you able to solve this? I have the same problem