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?
Follow the steps below.
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
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
Click on "Activities" or "Show Applications" and search for "XYZ spreadsheet". It should appear.
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.
