To make a fair copy of a character written freely and to distribute the content thereof easily and quickly by a method wherein the content described on a board is subjected to character recognition and converted into a character code of a small data size and this character code is made transmittable to a personal computer or the like.

A content described on a board 20 is subjected to character recognition and the one which can be recognized as a character is transferred as a character code of a small data size. The board 20 can read a written character and others and change them into electric signals and the board prepared by overlaying a transparent touch panel on a liquid crystal display panel, or the like, can be used, for instance. A RAM 30 stores the character code resulting from the character recognition of character image data inputted from the board 20, while a mail transfer processing program 43 stored in ROM 40 transfers the content stored in a board display buffer 34 to an external personal computer as an electronic mail.