Patent ID: 8370768

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a displaying unit which displays a number of menu items from a plurality of menu items on a screen, the display of the menu items corresponding to one layer of a plurality of layers from a hierarchical layer structure; an inputting unit which selects a menu item from the menu items displayed on the screen by the displaying unit; and a storing unit which registers the menu item selected by the input unit in at least one of a plurality of user custom menu tables associated with one or more users from a plurality of users, the menu item being registered by pushing a special key for longer than a set time period, the user custom menu tables having registration regions where a number of the menu items are stored; a storing unit controller which controls writing data/reading data to/from the storing unit; and a screen generating unit which generates the screen to be displayed by the displaying unit, wherein the storing unit is configured to store a registered user table including user tables, each of the user tables being assigned to at least one of the plurality of the user custom menu tables corresponding to one or more of the users, each of the user custom menu tables is registered as one of a plurality of information items included in each of the user tables, if the special key is not pushed for longer than the set period of time, the display unit displays a menu item list corresponding to a layer lower than the one layer or a controller executes a process assigned to the menu item, the storing unit controller registers the selected menu item in a registration region of the user custom menu table when the registration region is an unregistered registration region, if the menu item selected by the inputting unit is registered in the user custom menu table for each user, and in a case where the menu item selected by the inputting unit is registered in the user custom menu table, when the unregistered registration region does not exist in the user custom menu table and the selected menu item is overwritten on a registration region where a menu item has been registered, the screen generating unit generates a screen which queries a user to select a registration region where a menu item has been registered as a registration region where the selected menu item is overwritten.