INFORMATION PROCESSING MEHTOD AND APPARATUS, AND STORAGE MEDIUM STORING MEDIUM STORING PROGRAM FOR PRACTICING THIS METHOD

When a result obtained upon character recognition of an input image is to be used as text data for a search operation, a proper search operation can be performed even if a character different from the actual character image is stored as text data due to a character extraction error in character recognition processing. An information processing apparatus includes an image scanner for inputting image information, OCR software for recognizing the input image, a text information storage section for storing a recognition result, and document search software for assuming addition of an extra character in a designated search word, forming a pattern obtained by deleting a character from the search word, and searching a document using this pattern.