To obtain a character retrieving device which can easily confirm the contents of data downloaded from an internet.

This character retrieving device has a downloading part 101 which downloads character data and image data from an internet, a character recognizing part 100 which performs character recognition of downloaded image data, a character code storage area 16 which stores downloaded character data and character data that undergoes character recognition by the part 100, a character retrieving part 103 which performs character retrieval of the character data stored in the area 16 and a retrieval result storage area 23 which stores character retrieval results executed by the part 103.