A method of recognizing and indexing documents, using a scanner connected to a computer, the method including scanning the documents, then using a pointing device or member of the computer to designate an arbitrary point P in at least one box of the documents, and finally recognizing by OCR the characters in the box so as to store them in a first database connected to the computer to enable documents scanned in this way to be indexed. The designation step comprises a step of searching for and identifying the box of the document containing the point P designated by the user.