In your last sentence of your first post your infer that a simple situation would of been black to black, white to white and ground to ground. So seems that what you were anticipating when you began removing the fan. But you also state while actually removing the fan, "It had three wires within conduit connected to it, those wires were orange, blue and grey. Then also connected to it was a separate set of wires coated in plastic, they were black, white, and a copper ground." Sounds like someone was trying to do a quick job during a commercial break or a halftime show maybe?? Anyway you say the orange, blue and grey wires from withing the conduit were definitely wired to the fan terminals? Or could they have been wire-nutted to the black and white wires from the NM cable? Then a pigtail from the wirenuts to the fan? Are the wires from within the conduit solid or stranded. Go CHIEFS

"...there are only 2 black wires, and 1 copper wire (ground). The instructions say i have to hook up the white wire to a set of white wires in the junction box. but there are no white wires in the junction box." I'm a bit confused by this description. Did you mean that there are 2 black wires, 1 copper wire and 1 white wire?. That's what would make sense. Assuming that's the case, here's the deal: There are a couple of ways switches can be wired. One way is that the power feed first enters the switch box with both a hot (black) and neutral (white). The neutral is simply passed on to the fixture (i.e., the incoming white is connected to the outgoing white). The incoming hot connects to the switch and an outgoing hot goes to the fixture. (So, two wires in, two wire out, right?) A second way is that the power feed goes first to the fixture. The white (neutral) connects directly to the fixture and the incoming hot goes to switch along with what we'll call a "return" wire. This is known as a "switch loop" and it has no neutral. One wire is "always hot" (the feed) and the other is the "switched hot" because it only gets power when the switch is on. [There are a couple of other ways to wire a switch, but these two are the most common.] A simple switch does not consume power itself. It only connects the two wires then it is closed ("on") and disconnects the two when it is open ("off"). The problem arises when a more complicated switch needs power for something. For example, a switch with a pilot light or night light consumes power itself and so it needs a neutral. Ditto with some timers. You cannot wire a switch that is itself a power consumer to a simple switch loop, which is apparently what you have. So, there are two possible solutions. First is to do some rewiring to bring a neutral into the box. One way to do this is replace the switch loop cable (two wires) with a three-wire cable, one of which will connect to the neutral at the fixture. Since you're not familiar with wiring, I won't elaborate on how to do this, or other ways this can be accomplished. You'd probably need an electrician. A second possible solution is to find an old-fashion mechanical timer that doesn't use electrical power itself. (It's basically a switch with a "wind up" spring.) This assumes, of course, that your intended purpose is just to let the fan run for a while and then switch off by itself. If your objectives are more sophisticated than that, I'm afraid you're SOL. Good luck.

No attic access? No way to get up there at all? Not a ceiling scuttle hidden in a closet some where?Agree with Joe, we can give guidelines to install the fan, but the wiring is the issue. Do you have a plan for wiring the fan? Probably the easiest would be to extend the wiring from the bathroom ceiling light. Attic access would make it a heckuva lot easier. But barring any out of the ordinary attic framing, extending the ceiling light circuit could be done with a couple of fishing tapes. Is that an option? And then...there are wall exhaust fans. Again, depending on location, electrical would be an issue.

Comments from us will do nothing to change thigs. You need to go up into the attic and look to see what they did.