I am trying to use the Path>Combine action to make compound paths, however when I do this, sometime the fill does not disappear. The compound path is created, but there is still a fill. I am not sure what is causing this or how to get around it. All the shapes are paths. Attached is an example (I know you could do an exclusion to get the same effect in this example).

Does anyone by chance know why this happens and how to fix it? I appreciate the help!

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

When you combine paths, the new path takes the style of, I think, the path that was created first, although I'm not sure about that. It does take the style of one of the original paths, but I guess I'm not sure which. Anyway, if one of those has a fill, the new path will also receive the fill, if not, it won't.

I think the simplest solution would be to simply to remove the fill, if you don't want the new compound path to have a fill. You can do that from the Fill and Stroke dialog, or even more quickly by right-clicking the Fill bar in the bottom left corner of the window, then Remove Fill.

It's about the "fill rule" used. This can either be even-odd or non-zero basically, it determines how to fill in subpaths (or not as the case may be).
See http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... -Fill-Rule

Under the fill and stroke dialogue -> right hand side at the top; there are two options - use the first one.

Thanks for the welcome, Brynn. I had read about the transfer of styles in the help tutorials in inkscape a while back. I just couldn't figure out why it wasn't working for me when combining some shapes.

Tomh - that did the trick! I had been searching a bit but couldn't come up with anything - I guess that is what happens when you don't have the right search terms. And thanks for pointing me to the manual for more clarification- A great help that completely makes sense.