Patent ID: 8547573

Claim:
An image forming apparatus suitable to be used as either one of a slave apparatus and a master apparatus in a specified copy mode in which the master apparatus reads image data to transmit the image data to the slave apparatus, and the slave apparatus prints out the image data, the image forming apparatus comprising: a receiving unit configured to receive image data from an external device; a determination unit configured to determine whether or not the received image data is the image data to be printed out in the specified copy mode; a printing unit configured to activate the image forming apparatus as the slave apparatus to print out the received image data in the specified copy mode in the case where said determination unit determines that the received image data is the image data to be printed out in the specified copy mode; and a storing unit configured to store, before the image forming apparatus is activated as the master apparatus, information of the external device, so that the external device can be selected as the slave apparatus when the image forming apparatus is activated as the master apparatus, wherein the information of the external device includes an IP address, and one or more of a model name of the external device, installed options of the external device and processable image formats of the external device.