An automated method and system for retrieving documents based on highlighted text from a scanned source. Documents that are stored within a multifunction device can be searched and retrieved using highlighted text as keyword. The search of such documents can further be extended towards other networked multifunction devices and also to retrieve information available on the Internet using highlighted text as a uniform resource locator pointer. The matched documents and their respective details are then displayed on a graphical user interface which provides the user with multiple actions to be taken with respect to the documents.