Viewing with Adobe 8...pdf files

I was told by Vanguard to install a later version of my Adobe Reader 6.0, so I installed the latest for my Pent 4 system Adobe Reader 8. I'm having the same problem. When I go to my statement page at Vanguard, I click on the view/download buttom for my statement. My computer does a quick read I guess and a window pops up if I want to open or save the file. I click open and it opens in Microsoft Word a statement with a pop-up box saying do I want to encode this and it has marked deafult Western Europen Windows. I click Ok. and it shows me this script and a whole bunch of #'s that make no sense. If I don't click on the box and cancel it, the page is blank...What am I doing wrong? thanks in advance...