PURPOSE: To provide the character recognizing method with which described data can be recognized even without using any dedicated OCR paper and a format change accompanying the change of a described data item can be easily performed at low cost.

CONSTITUTION: This device is composed of an image data input part 21, picture element deciding part 22 for deciding white and black picture elements for each line of inputted image data, black picture element counter 23 for counting the number of black picture elements in the line in a prescribed direction, black picture element comparing part 24 for comparing the amount of prescribed continued black picture elements with the value of the black picture element counter 23, frame recognizing part 26 for deciding whether the scanned lines express a frame or not according to the result of the black picture element comparing part 24, and character recognizing part 27 for recognizing the characters described inside that frame.