Apologies if this is simple question - this is my first post on this forum. I am using Dolphin in Ubuntu 12.04. When Dolphin launches, under Home, I see the normal default folders, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc. and these folders are linked to ~ /Documents, ~/Downloads, etc - i.e. the defaults folders in my Home directory. What I would like to do is rather than have these folders linked to my Home folder I would like them linked/pointed to similar folder names but located on a different part (e.g. partition) on my pc. I can do something like what I want to achieve by using a feature called Symbolic Link but folder previewing does not work consistantly. Is there a way of configuring where folders point to?

You can change the locations of those folders in Systemsettings->User Account Details->Paths. Not sure if that would affect your existing places in Dolphin though. (I don't have them here on openSUSE, and neither in a KUbuntu 14.04 installation I did last weekend in VirtualBox)

OTOH, you can add/remove/edit entries in the Places panel by just right->clicking on it. So (maybe) remove those existing ones, and add your own to the directories you prefer, or edit the existing ones.

Or do you mean the folders in the main (big) area?
Well, this is a listing of your home folder's content. Dolphin just shows what is in your home folder (like a file manager is supposed to), so you can't make it show other things there of course.
But you can configure _which_ folder Dolphin should show on startup in Dolphin's settings (Startup->Home Folder->Location).

Maybe post a screenshot to clarify what you really mean.

Here is a picture of Dolphin (on my Ubuntu 12.04 system)
http://s30.postimg.org/mxqogk3zl/dolphin.gif

On the left pane you can see Home is highlighted and I have drawn an arrow to the Documents folder. I would like specifically like to change the location/pointing of the Documents and Pictures folders - is this a 'Dolphin' thing or a 'Ubuntu 12.04' thing? Does Dolphin pick up the link from the system?

what is it regarding folder previewing that doesn't work with symbolic links?

in Places "Home" shows your ~/ folder not a collection of user defined locations unless you use links

is your alternative documents and pictures folders std files systems? for example are they encrypted or NTFS?

I am trying to convert a neighbour from win7 to Ubuntu - one thing they 'must have' is folder preview or folder thumbnails. I tried nautilus (on a 12.04 system) but it was having none of it and having used Dolphin before I install it and it does the trick. I selected all their pictures on their NTFS win7 side (I am dual booting) and created symbolic links to their /home/Pictures folder. OK, there is a small arrow on the folder, but it worked a treat and I set Dolphin as the default file manager for Ubuntu. I thought I had cracked it until I rebooted - when I clicked on Places (the word Places in the top panel of the screen is the thing you click on to launch the file manager) Dolphin launched and I saw my /home folders - however, instead of the normal icons they looked like plain rectangular boxes with '1's and '0s' in. (Unfortunately I am not in my neighbours so cannot get a picture - I also cannot replicate it in Virtualbox). I cannot remember exactly what I did re. Dolphins config but I could get the icons back with the previews. Problem is, the icons do not 'retain' when I reboot. So, my next (naive) thought was to not use symbolic links but to point /home/Pictures directly at the NTFS My Documents/My Pictures folder. I'm guessing it does not really work like this.

quarkrad wrote:On the left pane you can see Home is highlighted and I have drawn an arrow to the Documents folder. I would like specifically like to change the location/pointing of the Documents and Pictures folders - is this a 'Dolphin' thing or a 'Ubuntu 12.04' thing?

Well, it's Dolphin's "thing" to show the files/directories that are in your home folder (by default).
It is supposed to be a file manager, it shows the files/folders that are there, nothing else.

Does Dolphin pick up the link from the system?

If you create a symlink to a different folder, it should "pick that up", yes.

But in earlier versions Dolphin did not show previews in folders on "slow" filesystems, and unfortunately it detected an NTFS filesystem as "slow".
Maybe that's your problem? What version of Dolphin do you have?

quarkrad wrote:So, my next (naive) thought was to not use symbolic links but to point /home/Pictures directly at the NTFS My Documents/My Pictures folder. I'm guessing it does not really work like this.

No. /home/Pictures is just a folder like any other folder. You cannot "point" that to another folder, other than creating a symlink instead.
Again, Dolphin is supposed to show the contents of a directory, not present you a nice way to organize your pictures,

But, as I said, you could set the NTFS "My Documents" folder as home folder in Dolphin's settings

Or you could just add the "My Pictures" folder (and whatever else you want) to the "Places" panel on the left, as already suggested.