Add icons to Dash Menu from programs

How do I add program icons into DASH Menu in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS?

I have downloaded the newest LibreOffice software and need some help with icons.

Does the Ubuntu software store add titles frequently: I didn't see a newer title I could get from the software makers site? Thanks, Donald

To add an icon to the dash you can make custom icons and put them into ~/.local/share/applications.

Simply copy and paste this template into gedit (or another text editor) and save it as libreoffice.desktop into the folder.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Libre Offce
Comment=Office Application
Exec=libre-office
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/libreoffice.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Keywords=libre;office;writer;
Categories=Office

If you want it so the icon is available for all users, put the .desktop file in /usr/share/applications.

The Categories=Office bit means it will show up under "Office" in the dash. If the icon is in /usr/share/pixmaps/libreoffice.png then actually you can just write Icon=libreoffice, there's no need for the full path, but only if it's in that path. Don't know if that works in Gnome 3 though.

If you have translations for the language you can specify them using something like the following:
Name[en_GB]=Libre Office
And replace [en_GB] with the code for each language.

Install the Main Menu program, its package name is alacarte:

sudo apt-get install alacarte

Open it from the Dash by typing Main Menu. It shows all the programs which are installed in the Dash. You can do these operations from here:

• Add or remove an application to launch from the Dash
• Change the command used to launch the application
• Specify if it should be launched from terminal
• Change the icon (click on the icon image of the application to do this)