I am VERY new to this. I have imported a jpeg into Inkscape. I would like to put a small solid white rectangle in the logo and then add text to that rectangle. I cannot seem to get a solid whit color. When I try, it just stays clear and nothing happens when I drag it onto the logo. (Can't imagine how hard its going to be to put the text in there!)

In the status bar you can see the stroke and fill indicated... maybe there are none. Stroke and fill can be turned on with the stroke/fill panel.

http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... troke.html

drag it onto

Hope you use the rectangle tool (F4) and not just trying to pull a colour swatch from the bottom palette to a non-existing object.

http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Shapes-Rectangles.html

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, and there are only a very few ways that Inkscape can edit an image in a raster format (JPG is a raster format).

One of those few ways is to add vector content on top of the raster image. But you won't be able to change the original JPG.

If you want to put a white rectangle on top of the JPG, you'll need to draw a rectangle with Rectangle tool and then make it white. After you've dragged out a rectangle, just click the white box in the palette. (you don't need to drag it).

With the Text tool , just click once on the canvas, and type. (If you drag a text box with the Text tool, the text won't show up if you plan to put it on the internet.)

And actually, I'm just guessing about what you need to do, since we haven't seen your image. So there may be some details I've missed.

This might also be helpful for the problem you describe. If you have already drawn a rectangle, and still can't make it opaque, try this article/tutorial:

What To Do When A Tool Stops Working (Or Tools are Drawing Invisible Objects)