Patent ID: 7706005

Claim:
An image communication apparatus, comprising: an email receiving unit that receives an email; a determining unit that analyzes the email received by the email receiving unit, and determines whether the email includes facsimile-forwarding instructing information which indicates a facsimile-forwarding destination; a converting unit that converts the email received by the email receiving unit into facsimile data, the facsimile data including facsimile image data to be transferred to a facsimile machine of the facsimile-forwarding destination indicated by the facsimile-forwarding instructing information, if the determining unit determines that the email received by the email receiving unit includes the facsimile-forwarding instructing information; a setting unit that sets a forwarding size upper limit of the facsimile data when the email received by the email receiving unit is facsimile-forward in the form of the facsimile data; a facsimile forwarding control unit that facsimile-forwards the facsimile data converted by the converting unit to the facsimile-forwarding destination indicated by the facsimile-forwarding instructing information when the facsimile data converted by the converting unit does not exceed the forwarding size upper limit set by the setting unit; a splitting unit that splits the facsimile data converted by the converting unit into a plurality of split facsimile data when the facsimile data converted by the converting unit exceeds the forwarding size upper limit; and a split forwarding unit that forwards the plurality of the split facsimile data split by the splitting unit to the facsimile machine of the facsimile-forwarding destination indicated by the facsimile-forwarding instructing information separately, wherein the split forwarding unit receives other data during splitting and forwarding the facsimile data.