shortcut to switch between virtual machine and host operating system? [duplicate]

okay so I have windows 8 and am running Lubuntu as a VM using vmplayer. I have my laptop hooked up to an external monitor so I have the VM full screen on my laptop and windows 8 on the monitor. What I want is, suppose I have a word document opened up in windows 8 but I'm typing in my VM right now and I want to quickly switch to the word document in windows 8, is there a keyboard shortcut / way to create a keyboard shortcut to switch between the VM and host operating system? Because moving the mouse and clicking between the VM and host operating system is getting a bit annoying.

You can use CTRL + ALT to escape the VM and use ALT + TAB to switch to it again. To let the VM grab your input, try pressing CTRL + g when VMware Player is focused (this at least works in VMware Workstation).