The container control enables the application to share records that are allocated among multiple containers in the same process. That is, records can be allocated once and then inserted into many containers in the same process. Only one copy of each record is in memory, but the container provides the flexibility for the records to appear as though they are independent of one another.

When a record is inserted into the container, the flRecordAttr and ptlIcon fields of the record structure are saved internally. The values in these fields cause the record attributes for all views and the icon position for the Icon view to be associated with the specific container into which the record is inserted. If the same record is inserted into multiple containers, the attributes and icon location of each record are maintained separately. The application uses the CM_QUERYRECORDINFO message to retrieve the current values of these two fields for a particular record in a specific container.