Also, is there any way to search a group of computers for a specific program?
Example: I would like to search for Microsoft Office on multiple machines. Is there any way to do this without running an inventory report on the machines?
Generally, no, not if the target is more than one system.
Using the Computer Explorer you can query a single machine at a time.
You can also sort, filter, and export the results of that query, and aggregate the results from multiple individual computers via an external file (worksheet, XML, CSV, etc.)
Bit. if you wish to search on multiple machines and report in the aggregate of those machines, it will require some form of inventory (to faciliate data collection into the Patch Manager database).