Made for Swiss self-employed & SMEs
A photo arrives from a client’s iPhone, the insurance portal wants a PDF, and the quote has to go out as a Word file. Between those small mismatches sits a familiar reflex: search for an “online file converter”, drag the document onto the first website, download the result. It works — and it quietly sends your file, with everything inside it, to a server you know nothing about. A free tool called Filee does the same job entirely on your own computer.
A small daily problem
File formats are the unnoticed friction of office life. An iPhone saves photos as HEIC, which many older programs refuse to open. A scan sits there as a JPG, but the portal insists on PDF. A client sends an old Word file; the offer has to go back as a PDF. None of it is difficult — but every detour costs minutes, and the tempting shortcut is always the same search box.
Online converters are fast, free and need no installation. The hidden price is the upload: the file travels to whoever runs the website, and you rarely learn where the server stands or how long the copy is kept. For a holiday photo, that hardly matters. For a client’s contract, a payslip or a patient letter, the question looks different.
What Filee does
Filee is a free, open-source converter for Windows, with preview versions for macOS and Linux. You hold the Ctrl key and drag a file onto any free spot on your screen: a small wheel of format icons opens at your cursor, and you drop the file onto the format you want. No program window, no account, no upload.
The list covers the everyday office cases — images, PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, plain text, e-books and archives, more than 240 formats in total. Several files can be converted in one go, and where no direct path exists, Filee chains the steps itself, for example from an older format to a newer one and on to the one you actually asked for. A few special cases borrow well-known helper programs (such as LibreOffice or FFmpeg) the first time they are needed; after that one download, everything runs on your machine again.
Why “stays on your computer” matters in Switzerland
As soon as a file contains anything about a person — a name on a contract, a salary figure, a health detail — it counts as personal data under the revised Swiss Data Protection Act. Self-employed people and small businesses carry the responsibility for what happens to that data, including what their tools do with it. An online converter hands the file to an unknown operator, often outside Switzerland, with no control over storage or deletion. A local converter removes the question entirely: nothing leaves your computer, so there is no third party you would have to trust or check.
Honest limits, and a simple habit
- Windows 10 and 11 are the stable platform; the macOS and Linux versions are previews. On a Mac, the first launch needs the “Open Anyway” step, because the app is not yet signed.
- Filee changes formats — it does not edit content. Corrections, signatures and blacked-out lines stay where they belong: with you and your other tools.
- Keep the original, convert a copy, and glance at the result before it goes to a client. A converter saves time, not the final check.
A file converter will not change your business, and that is fine. But it removes a quiet, recurring risk from the daily routine — for exactly zero francs.
