Patent ID: 8024300

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: an image input device configured to input image data; an image storage device configured to store the image data; an image output device configured to output the image data; an operation device configured to command control of the image data; a first document manager configured to store the image data input by the image input device in the image storage device, associate the image data stored in the storage device with a first identifier, output the image data associated with the first identifier via the image output device when the first identifier is specified via the operation device, and delete the image data associated with the first identifier from the image storage device when a first condition is satisfied; a second document manager configured to associate the image data to be output by the image output device with a second identifier, output the second identifier applied to the image data via the image output device, and output the image data associated with the second identifier via the image output device when the second identifier is input via the image input device; and a detector that detects one or more second identifiers on image data, wherein when the detector detects two or more second identifiers on an image, the image forming apparatus prints all image data corresponding to the two or more second identifiers at once, and wherein the first document manager is configured such that, when the image data is associated with both the first identifier and the second identifier, the first document manager does not delete the image data from the image storage device and prohibits the first identifier from being specified via the operation device.