Most ADE Installers will create a shortcut on your desktop that will look something like this:

If you don't have one then creating one is not too difficult and it is probably the easiest way to start ADE.  To create a shortcut open Windows Explorer (or your favorite file manager) and navigate to the ADE main folder

By default it will be C:\MSFS\FS Design Tools\Airport Design Editor.  Bear in mind this is the location of the current version (1.60)  If you are not running 1.60 then you might want to get it.

1. Once you are in the main ADE application folder find the file called Airport Design Editor.exe

1. Right Click on the application file and the context menu should open.   Click Create shortcut

After a short time a new file will be created which is the shortcut to ADE.  Drag this onto your desktop.  You might want to rename it to something less cumbersome - at least remove the - Shortcut

Just click (or double click) the ADE shortcut

IMPORTANT   When you start ADE it checks for available versions of the simulator by checking the registry.  It will only display versions that it can find.  If only a single version is found then ADE will not display this selector window but just start for the version it found.

To select the version of ADE to start in:

1. Select the version from the drop down menu.
2. Click OK to start ADE.

If you see this red selector window that ADE has not found any supported simulator version on your computer

It is also possible that you see the drop down list but a version you expect to see is not there.  In this case I should see FS9 but it is missing

So what has gone wrong?  Well ADE is checking the registry entries for each version of the simulator.  Sometimes these entries are missing or otherwise wrong.  In this case ADE won't show the version.  If it can't find the proper registry entries for any of the supported versions then it will show the red selector window.

What do you need to do.  You will need to check that your simulator versions are properly installed.and have a correct and available registry entry.  This is outside the scope of this article but we will cover it separately

In all current versions it is only possible to have one copy of ADE running.  This is done to avoid the dangers of having the same project or airport open  more than once and the changes getting mixed up..  If you see this just click OK and then find the copy you already have running and use that.

If this is the first time that you have run ADE for the simulator version you started then you will see the new user wizard.  You can find out how to complete the settings here

Otherwise you will see a blank display and you can load an airport.  You can find out all about loading an airport here.