5. A computer-implemented method of retrievably storing contents of a plurality of documents having images imprinted thereon comprising optically scanning the documents to form a digital representation of the images on the documents, machine selecting search words from each document to be used in locating the document from mass storage, converting the selected search words to code, storing the converted search words in a memory, storing the image representation of each document, establishing from images of the scanned documents a font table in image of alphanumeric characters in a plurality of different fonts each character in each font correlated with an equivalent character in code, searching for a document by the steps of manually selecting a search word, manually entering the selected search word in code, constructing by machine an image of the selected search word from the font table in at least one font, comparing the constructed search word with the image representations of scanned documents until a match in a stored document image is found, and displaying an image thereof of the matched document.
5. A computer-implemented method of retrievably storing contents of a plurality of documents having images imprinted thereon comprising optically scanning the documents to form a digital representation of the images on the documents, machine selecting search words from each document to be used in locating the document from mass storage, converting the selected search words to code, storing the converted search words in a memory, storing the image representation of each document, establishing from images of the scanned documents a font table in image of alphanumeric characters in a plurality of different fonts each character in each font correlated with an equivalent character in code, searching for a document by the steps of manually selecting a search word, manually entering the selected search word in code, constructing by machine an image of the selected search word from the font table in at least one font, comparing the constructed search word with the image representations of scanned documents until a match in a stored document image is found, and displaying an image thereof of the matched document. 7. A method according to claim 5 and further comprising comparing characters of an incoming document with the font table and, if a matching font is not found, adding images of the characters of the incoming document to the font table.