How to add wine programs to Plank

Many Linux users are thoroughly impressed with the speed of their new operating system, the simplicity of the design, and of course, the amount of customization available. elementary OS is a prime example of speed and simplicity. Customization however, can be a little bit more difficult sometimes.

Often users must resort to using WINE in order to run programs such as Microsoft Office, or a game. elementary OS caters for this but programs installed do not appear in Plank which is a great shame.

To counter this, you can do the following tweak (courtesy of unheeding on the elementary OS subreddit).

Firstly, a new .desktop icon must be created. These are hidden files (note the ".") and contain all the useful link and description information needed by elementary. Use Scratch to create the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Microsoft Word 2010
GenericName = Document Editor
Comment=PlayOnLinux
Terminal = False
Type=Application
Exec=/usr/share/playonlinux/playonlinux --run "Microsoft Word 2010" %F
Icon=/home/[YOUR USERNAME]/.PlayOnLinux/icons/full_size/Microsoft Word 2010
Name[fr_FR]=Microsoft Word 2010
Categories = Office;
StartupNotify = False

Obviously modify the details to fit your needs. Save the file in /usr/share/applications as the filename "Microsoft Word 2010.desktop" (again modifying to fit your needs).

Then run the command: killall slingshot-launcher

This will restart slingshot (the program launcher) and populate it with your awesome new icon. From there, simply drag it from Applications to your dock. You're done!

Hopefully this guide will be a useful tweak for users who have been frustrated by additional actions such as opening PlayonLinux to access a program.

Or as unheeding says: "Then again, you could just use Libre Office and save yourself some time."