How do I pin a file shortcut to Ubuntu dock?

Question

I would like to pin a file's shortcut to the dock in the Ubuntu 18.04 GNOME desktop so that the file opens directly when I click it, for example a spreadsheet file that opens with LibreOffice Calc. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Follow the steps below.

1. Create a .desktop file (say spreadsheet1.desktop) in ~/.local/share/applications/ directory. You can do that by running the following command in Terminal:

   touch ~/.local/share/applications/spreadsheet1.desktop
   

2. Open the file with a text editor, for example by running

   gedit ~/.local/share/applications/spreadsheet1.desktop
   

   Then add the following lines:

   [Desktop Entry]
   Name=XYZ spreadsheet
   Exec=xdg-open /full/path/to/XYZ-spreadsheet.ods
   Comment=Launch XYZ spreadsheet
   Terminal=false
   Type=Application
   Icon=x-office-spreadsheet
   

3. Save the file.

4. Click on "Activities" or "Show Applications" and search for "XYZ spreadsheet". It should appear.

5. Right click on it and mark as favourite.

Note: The xdg-open command opens the file with the default application associated with the file-type. You can alternatively set

Exec=libreoffice /full/path/to/XYZ-spreadsheet.ods

in the .desktop file to always open the file with LibreOffice Calc.

Answer 2

To add to the answer from @pomsky, if you want to change the icon, refer to this page.

For example, if you click the icon and the referred url is

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Desktop_icons#/media/File:Gnome-emblem-favorite.svg,

then replace the Icon value with emblem-favorite.