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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?

Zanna
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Nick Hope
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    You can pin only Application to Gnome Dock.. But you can found some similar solution in this thread: https://askubuntu.com/questions/966740/how-do-i-pin-my-favorite-folders-in-ubuntu-dock-like-in-windows – slava Nov 07 '18 at 08:32

2 Answers2

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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.

pomsky
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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.

Hiro
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