How do I restore a 'panel' in Ubuntu?

"Thanks for the suggestions guys.

It turns out that what was missing was the 'Notification area' - which itself contains various icons - rather than a whole panel (which explains why several icons disappeared when I clicked 'Remove from panel').

When I re-added this via 'Add to panel' all my missing stuff reappeared (Dropbox, Gmail notifier, battery meter etc)."

"I did this, too, and found this answer here:

Type this in terminal: sudo
dpkg-reconfigure ubuntu-desktop

I personally think this is a giant usability problem - removing the panel should be a lot harder to do by mistake."