I have just installed Mint17.1 KDE on my laptop. I have added Chrome Browser icon to the panel, which appeared on the right, together with date/time, sound, connections etc. I moved the Chrome icon to the left end of the panel but somehow moved all the icons that were on the right too!

I cannot get the original icons back to the right end of the panel.... How can I do this? thanks...

Slight development - I have put some spacers onto my panel, now I can get the icons originally on the right back on the right. However, when I minimize a program window it's name does not appear on the panel, so it can be difficult to restore any minimized windows!!

I would guess that your panel is missing a task manager (which should show all running windows, unless you have selected the option to only show minimized windows).
To add it back, right-click on the panel, or click on the settings icon (or "cashew") -> Add Widgets -> find one of the task manager widgets (in my case I have "Task Manager" and "Icon-only Task Manager" available) and double-click it to add it to the panel. The task manager widget will auto-expand to fill available space so you may remove the spacer widgets that you'd added.

Yes, that was it - thank you. I must have deleted the original task manager when I moved the Chrome icon. All restored to sanity now.

BTW - I prefer the icon only Task Manager - so thanks for that too!