Patent ID: 8054488

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a storage unit; a communication unit; a scanning unit to scan a document and to generate scanned image data; a printing part to execute printing based on the scanned image data; a controlling unit; and an inputting part configured to receive printing and scanning operation commands, the inputting part further configured to receive an user input to select a file to be transmitted to an external FTP server, wherein, in response to the user input requesting the selected file to be transmitted the external FTP server, the image forming apparatus operates as an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client by initiating a connection with the external FTP server and transmitting the selected file from the image forming apparatus to the external FTP server via a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) using the communication unit of the image forming apparatus, and wherein the file transmitted to the external FTP server is selected, from a plurality of files stored in the storage unit, in response to the user input received via the inputting part of the image forming apparatus.