To make it possible to show whether the effective information exist in the areas other than a currently displayed area by discriminating an effective area having the effective information, scrolling to have only the effective display areas and showing the positional relation between the display and effective areas.

When the stored information is shown at a display part 5, a control part 1 sets a large threshold in a reception mode of the facsimile communication and otherwise sets the small threshold. Then, the part 1 calls the stored information out of a storage part 3 to show it at the part 5, displays small vertical and horizontal scroll icons and detects the presence or absence of a scroll instruction. If only an effective area is included in a large scrolled display area when a large scroll is instructed, the normal large scroll processing is carried out. If the areas other than the effective area are included in the display area, the scroll value is reduced by an amount equal to the number of included effective areas. In addition, a small scroll icon showing the opposite direction is displayed if an effective area exists in the scrolling direction. If no effective area exists in the scrolling direction, the display is discontinued.