forwarding emails with Mail

Very new user,used to thunderbird on a pc.I got Mail all set up,synced my contacts with gmail to the address book and also got my hotmail address to go on Mail.I am getting all my emails through all right.I can send as well but something goes wrong when I try to forward an email.It says 'sent' and makes that weird noise but the email never gets there.If I go online and forward it directly through gmail or hotmail it works all right.The odd thing is,the emails are showing up in the 'sent' folders online even though they haven't got through.I've tried using the 'forward' button on Mail and Message- forward on the bar but neither work.Am I missing something I should have set up in Preferences?I did download Lion yesterday,maybe there's something new I should have done with the new version of Mail?
I'm using a macmini by the way.