A tabular document reader device for recognizing characters on a tubular document which is composed of a plurality of items and which has different categories according to each of the items includes a ruled line extracting portion (14) for detecting and extracting ruled lines from the read tabular document. An item specifying input portion (15) inputs proper reading conditions for items delimited by the extracted ruled lines. A character recognizing portion (17) limits what should be recognized in the respective items according to the input reading conditions for the items.