configuring apt/installing local files

[Paul Kaplan]

I am switching from an rpm based distro.  I'm used to downloading rpm files 
locally and then installing them from command line.

I downloaded a deb file for the opera browser and added the following to the 
apt sources.list file

deb file:<directory containing deb> local universe

When I searched for opera in Adept it doesn't appear.

How do I install a deb file that isn't in a standard repository?
Paul