Patent ID: 7002712

Claim:
A method for selectively scanning a document under control of a scanning device operably associated with a memory, the method comprising the steps of: operating the scanning device during a single scanning operation to (i) automatically sense individual marker areas at predetermined locations in a region on a control sheet, each marker area located near an associated human intelligible representation of a scanning function control parameter, (ii) respond only to the presence of a marking at one or more of said sensed marker areas and to correlate the sensed presence of a said marking with data stored in said memory corresponding to the scanning function control parameter associated with the marker area having the sensed marking; and (iii) performing a scanning operation of one or more document areas associated with said control sheet to digitally encode scanned data content thereof in accordance with the scanning function control parameter associated with each respective marker area having a sensed marking; and performing at least a further operation independently of said scanning function control parameters on scan encoded data only from one or more of said document areas occupying less than the total document area scannable during said scanning operation.