Ok, I've done a lot of searching and I'm finding bits and pieces of info, so let me post the question here.

I currently access my main email account via Thunderbird (POP).  In Thunderbird, I have a filter set up to forward email based on several different criteria to a second email account which I access with my mobile device.  The issue is when forwarding via a filter, Thunderbird ignores it's forwarding options (set to forward inline) and always forwards as a .eml attachment.  My new mobile device (a Palm Pre) can not open the .eml files.

Because the chances of getting either Palm or Thunderbird developers to fix either side of this issue is remote, I'm looking for an alternative.  I could set up email filtering in cPanel, but it appears the current version only handles account-wide (not email account-specific) filtering.  So any filter I set up applies to any email address associated with my domain.  That won't work.

Reading cPanel documentation, it appears there is support for user level filtering but I'm guessing this is in a future version of cPanel because I don't see that option.  It appears the only other option is a cumbersome process of building EXIM filters.

My question is: will we see this user-level filtering any time soon, or do I need to start building an EXIM filter file?

Well, I've started down the path of creating an Exim filter script based on this thread and the documentation.

My simple script is forwarding email from certain domains sent to my specific email address at my domain to a second gmail account:

if
 $header_to: contains "me@mydomain.com" and
 (
 $header_from: contains "abc.com"
 or $header_from: contains "xyz.com"
 )
then
 unseen deliver "myotheraccount@gmail.com"
endif

I need to expand this quite a bit still, but it's a start.  I'd still like to know if LP's cPanel is going to be getting the user-level filtering feature, since that would save me all the manual steps.

Actually it has user-level filtering and has had it for a couple years...it depends on your host for whether or not they give you access to that portion of cPanel.

If they don't give you access, don't panic, there is a way to use the Account-Level Filtering for specific email accounts. In fact I prefer this way because of the fact that all of the filters are listed in one place rather than separated by domain.

I will be creating a tutorial/article on my website www.Visuex.com about email filtering and forwarding discussing the pros and cons of both and yes neither option is perfect.

However in the meantime, here is a screenshot of an example account-level filter that works for a specific email address.



Note- there is also an option for "equals" in the selection where I chose "contains" the reason why you use contains instead of equals is because equals refers to EXACTLY what is in the input field. Which means it is case-sensitive. So if you use equals for "demo@example.com" and someone sends and email to "Demo@example.com" then it won't match and therefore wont redirect. Using contains is case-insensitive meaning it will match the email regardless of any odd capitalization.